


In Our Wildest Moments

by carlxy



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alex can't believe Brendan loves Nickelback, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Angst, Brendan is not a hockey player, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-17 05:52:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10587780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carlxy/pseuds/carlxy
Summary: "Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a job these days?" Brendan says, jabbing a finger at Alex. "Oh, right, you don’t, because you’re a millionaire! And yeah, I googled you after you got me fired, mr. hotshot hockey player."Or: Chucky gets Brendan fired and then falls in love with him.





	1. A Series of Rather Unfortunate Events

Alex Galchenyuk doesn’t believe in superstitions. Sure there’s the sweater from his triple-A days that helps settle his nerves before games, but for the most part he believes in the virtues of talent and hard work, believes that only he has control over his own life.

But as he stands there at Tim Hortons this morning, the last person in a line that snakes all the way to the door, he starts to wonder if he has somehow incurred the wrath of a malignant spirit…or something; he hasn’t been awake two hours and already this day has turned irrevocably sour.

It started particularly early, and particularly nasty.

For one thing, Alex woke up with a jackhammer pounding behind his right eyeball and, en route to the bathroom for his pills, proceeded to stub his toe against the bedside table.

For another, Alex discovered, after he managed pick himself off the floor and limp toward the bathroom, that he had ran out of aspirin.Slamming the medicine cabinet shut, he broke the mirror into three distinct and jagged pieces. He cursed the three faces staring back at him.

And for yet another thing, adding one more item to his laundry list of morning blessings, Alex’s coffee maker has mysteriously stopped working. 

He did what he’s always done: placed a filter on the chamber, put the grounds in, poured a cup’s worth of water into the reservoir, turned the percolator on, and then waited for it to do its work. What it did instead was shudder pathetically on the kitchen counter and spit out flecks of muddy liquid everywhere before gurgling to a stop. He may not be a culinary genius, but he does know when a simple machine goes kaput.

Then he suddenly remembered Anna using it from when she stayed over the other day. Before he realized what he was doing, he reached for his phone and began to dial her sister’s number. It rang for a long time, and by the time she finally picked up, he was properly fuming.

“You broke it,” he said in Russian.

“Huh?” Anna’s voice was thick with sleep.

“My coffee maker,” he said. “You broke it.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did, and now I don’t have breakfast, so thanks for that.”

“Fuck off. I even cleaned it for you, you slob.”

“Well, you obviously didn’t do a good job at it since there’s smoke coming out of it now.”

“Maybe _you_ broke it,” she said. “Why are you blaming me?”

“Because you were the last person to use it!”

“Did you at least try to find out what’s wrong with it? You’re pretty useless in the—”

“I don’t have time for that, Anna!” Alex growled. “I have morning skate in 30 minutes!”

“Then go buy yourself a cup of coffee like a normal person instead of bitching about it. Jesus, Alex, you’re an adult—figure it out!” And with that, Anna hung up and presumably went back to sleep.

So in the end, he figures it’s Anna’s fault he’s stuck here at Tim Hortons in the first place. _See if I let you use my credit cards ever again_ , he thinks bitterly. 

Meanwhile, the line is moving at a glacial pace. What the fuck is taking so long?

At some point he considered going without the coffee, but he can’t even bear the idea of having to go through practice without at least some caffeine in his system—so he waits…and waits…and waits some more among the dead-eyed, sleep-deprived people of Montreal.

By the time he makes it to the counter, his mood as gotten so foul that he can’t even muster the enthusiasm to appreciate the cute but rather beleaguered barista grinning brightly at him. He simply asks for a large dark roast and pays for it.

Alex almost weeps when he is finally handed his coffee—the morning's first victory. But when he takes a sip, he immediately realizes that he has prematurely celebrated. 

It isn’t a dark roast. It’s sweet, so sweet that he can picture the Habs' nutritionist twitching in his sleep right now.

“Excuse me,” he says to the cute barista then. “This isn’t what I ordered.”

The barista frowns. “Shit,” he says. “It’s not?”

“I ordered a dark roast with a dash of milk,” says Alex. “This…I don’t know what this is.”

“Fuck,” the barista says, then takes the cup back with a winning smile. “Sorry about that. Give me a sec and I’ll whip it up for you.”

_So that’s why the line’s so long_ , he thinks. _They have idiots working behind the counter. Cute idiots, but idiots all the same_.

When the barista returns with his coffee, Alex takes a tentative sip in front of him to make sure he got it right. 

He didn’t.

This one’s _way_ too creamy.

Alex pinches the bridge of his nose and starts massaging it; his headache had reemerged with a vengeance. 

“It’s no wonder why you're stuck in this place,” he says in Russian. 

Seriously, how hard can it be to fuck up a simple order? 

When he looks up, however, he realizes belatedly that he’s actually said none of it in Russian. There’s no hiding the hurt in the barista’s face. He looks as though Alex has just insulted his very being, which, in a way, he has.

The barista struggles to respond, his mouth opening but no words are coming. “Hey, that wasn’t a nice thing to say,” he eventually tells Alex.

For Alex’s part, he is also at a loss for words. It was not a nice thing to say, sure, but he also didn’t mean for him to hear it. Now he doesn’t know how what to do. How do you even respond to a Freudian slip of this embarrassing sort?

“Take that back,” the barista says.

Alex opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, a bald and barrel-chested man who looks to be the store manager suddenly appears. 

“Is there any problem?” he asks, and when turns to Alex a flash of recognition crosses his face.

“Uh no,” Alex begins to say. “Not at—”

“His attitude,” the barista says.

The manager’s mouth falls open. “I beg your pardon?” he asks his employee.

Alex tries to explain what has happened, that there’s simply been a mix up and that it’s no big deal, really, but neither man seems tobe hearing him.

“Do you have any idea who he is?” the manager asks, cocking his head at Alex’s direction.

“Yeah,” the barista says, loud enough for Alex to hear. “As a matter of fact I do. He’s a rude person who has absolutely no sense of compassion—” 

The manager pulls him away from the counter and then turns to Alex. “I am so sorry about that,” he says hastily. “Valerie, take charge! Valerie here will see to it that you get whatever you need.” He then drags the barista toward the back and gives him some stern talking to.

While the girl named Valerie addresses the snafu, Alex’s attention remains on the two men at the back. He can hear snippets of their conversation, hear phrases like “we’ve gone over this before…” and “you can’t talk to paying customers like that…” and “it doesn’t _matter_ what he said…” 

When Alex glances at their direction, he finds the barista’s steely gaze at him. It’s about as intimidating as a Labrador puppy’s.

Alex blushes and quickly turns away.

After Valerie hands him his coffee, profusely apologizing for having caused any inconvenience, he bolts out of there. 

Inside his car Alex rests his forehead against the steering wheel and releases a long-suffering breath. All he wanted was a cup of coffee. What did he do to receive this kind of misfortune so early in the morning?

As he pulls out of his parking slot, he promises never to step foot in this Tim Hortons ever again.

**x**

Coach Julien gives him hell when he shows up at the rink fifteen minutes late, says what an incredible honor it is that he’s finally graced them with his presence, and then threatens to scratch him off tonight’s lineup if he doesn’t get his tardy ass on the ice in three minutes.

Alex is on the ice in three minutes.

None of the boys acknowledge him with any real warmth when he joins them there. Some (Patch) even openly glare at him. 

Alex turns red, and he doesn't meet anyone’s eyes: the entire team is punished for individual offenses, and so by his showing up late, they will all equally suffer the consequences. Coach will probably have all of them skate lines by the end of the morning skate, and no one’s ever thrilled about skating lines by the end of the morning skate.

He tries not to take any of it personally, because none of them really does. (On those rare occasions when he found himself, for whatever reason, at the receiving end of uncalled for punishments, he’s always found himself over it by the time they're all skating out of the rink.) And yet he can’t but be annoyed and a little hurt by all the unpleasant looks he’s getting.

Once practice begins, he tries to forget all of it. Instead he channels all of the morning’s frustrations into the task at hand, grips his stick a little tighter, pushes himself a little harder. He revels in the pleasant burn down his thighs and lets the sting of the cold propel him forward. Flush. Perspire. Work it up. These things have always given him purpose in times of trouble, and he finds solace in them now.

As it happens, every guy on the team seems equally eager to apply themselves. Throughout practice they all play off of each other with such gusto that there’s a certain fluidity to their movements. Alex is not entirely surprised.

They have a crucial game tonight. Tonight, if they win against the Bruins, they’re moving on to the Conference Finals. Tonight, if they win just as they had won their first three games, they will have the golden opportunity to rub their victory over the rat-faced Bruins.

Imagining the Bruins’ spectacular loss sends a warm and tingling feeling all over Alex, and he doesn’t doubt that the guys have a similar image running in their heads right now.

When morning skate finally ends, Alex is doubled over with exertion. His chest burns as he gasps for breath. His hair is matted onto his head, and his whole body ached in all the right ways. And yet he feels like himself for the first time today.

With one last run-through from coach, he sends everyone back to the locker room to get cleaned up, but not before calling Alex out.

“Galchenyuk!” he yells out. “This is the last time you come here late. Next time you can forget about playing for the remainder of the season, you hear?”

Alex nods. “Absolutely, coach,” he says. Not gonna happen again.”

“Better not. Go hit the showers.”

On their way out of the rink, Nate slings an arm around Alex’s shoulders. “Rough morning?” he says, grinning.

“Tell me about it,” he replies, but doesn’t elaborate. He just wants to forget all about it.

Everyone’s pretty chipper in the locker room. Now that they’re all properly awake and motivated, everyone’s eager for tonight’s game.The mood it lends the team is electric.

As Alex leaves Bell Center, sports bag in one hand and protein shake in another, he’s in such a good mood that the events from earlier appears to him now like like a bad dream, a figment of his groggy imagination. The only proof that it really did happen is the empty cup sitting in his cup holder that he sees when he gets into his car.

His mind drifts back to the particular as he drives home. In retrospect, he really did act horribly, and he can’t help but think what his mother would say if she knew. It isn’t a pretty thought. 

He may have been raised in a European household, taught European customs and values, but that doesn’t mean he grew up without having learned proper manners. His mother didn’t raise an uncouth human being.

Then he remembered the cute barista. Despite his inadequacies, he was obviously trying his best. He’s young and probably working hard to build a future. It may be that that’s the only job he’s qualified to do; he should be commended for it. Instead Alex gave him shit. He didn’t even get to apologize. It makes him feel pretty rotten.

He can be an asshole sometimes but he’s a good fucking person—all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. At least that much he knows.

Sighing, Alex makes up his mind. He’s going to do the right thing, the honorable thing—if not for himself, then he’s going to do it as a testament to his mother’s parenting.

He turns a sharp corner and drives down a familiar road toward a place he had not three hours ago promised never to step foot ever again.

**x**

The Timmies isn’t as crowded as it had been this morning. Save for a few people having an early brunch, the place is practically dead. 

Alex walks over to the counter and watches the elderly man in front of him slowly collect his change, taking special care to interleaf the bills of the same kind in his wallet and deposit the coins in the right compartment. When he ambles away, a female barista greets Alex cheerfully and asks what she can get him. Alex doesn’t recognize her.

“I, uh, actually don’t want anything,” he says. “I’m looking for one of your colleagues. He was here earlier working the morning shift?”

She scrunches her face and tilts her head to the side.

“Brown hair, blue eyes,” Alex adds helpfully. “He’s about this tall, and he’s very smiley.”

“Brendan?”

For some reason, it seems like the right name for him. He looks like a Brendan to Alex. “Uh, maybe? I don’t know, actually. I was wondering if I can maybe speak with him?” 

Her face falls. “Oh.”

“What?”

“He’s been let go,” she says with a grimace.

Alex doesn’t understand. “What do you mean?”

“He was fired,” she says.

“But he was just here this morning.”

“Yeah,” she replies, “and this morning he was fired.”

An uneasy feeling settles on Alex’s stomach. “May I know the reason for it?”

“Sorry,” she says, sheepish. “I can’t give out that kind of information.” A new customer walks up behind Alex then, prompting the barista to politely ask “is there anything else I can help you with? Maybe a cup of coffee?”

He shakes his head. “No, that’s all right. Thank you, though.”

Alex sits under a cloud of guilt and shame the whole drive back to his apartment. 

When he was younger, Alex had a particularly unpleasant argument with his dad during one of their many moves to a different country. He didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to go to a new school, didn’t want to make new friends. At some point, he started shouting at his dad, something about him not giving a shit about his family, how he loved hockey more than his flesh and blood. Even now Alex remembers clearly the look on his dad’s face when he said it. For the next two weeks, his father and he never spoke a word to each other, and for the next two weeks he felt like shittiest person in the world. How he felt then isn’t unlike how he feels now.

**x**

Anna is in his apartment when he comes home. He knows it even before he slots his key into the lock because an obnoxious pop song blares from behind his door and reverberates down the hallway. He finds her at the kitchen island eating ice cream straight from the tub.

“That’s gonna make you fat, you know,” Alex says as he passes her on the way to the fridge, grabbing another protein shake. “It’s gonna go straight down to your thighs and give you cellulite.”

“No it won’t.” Anna shrugs. “I have fast metabolism.”

“For someone who’s so obsessed about how she looks, you eat a lot of junk.” Alex grabs the spoon out of her hand and then helps himself to the ice cream.

Anna swats his hand away. “Aren’t you on a diet?”

“I’m allowed sugar after a work out,” he says with his mouth full. It’s a weak excuse, but Anna doesn’t call him out on it.

They sit there demolishing the ice cream between the two of them while Carly Rae Jepsen croons something about body language doing some trick and shit. The ridiculousness of the situation doesn’t escape Alex for one second.

“You know,” Alex says after a while, “if you keep showing up in my apartment unannounced I’m gonna have to get my keys back. What’s the point of having your own place if your sister is going to squat there anyway. I need my privacy. What if I have someone over?”

Anna snorts. “You?” she says. “Fat chance, brother.”

“It could happen!”

“ _Sure_ ,” she says. “Besides, the only reason why I’m here”—she hops off the stool and reaches for what looks like a huge box on the counter—“is to give you this, because I’m the best sister in the world.”

Alex studies the square box that Anna deposited in front of him. When he recognizes what it is, he drops his head on the counter and groans.

“What?” Anna says. “You don’t like it? I’ll have you know that that cost me a fortune. It’s not at all a cheap coffee maker. You could at least pretend you appreciate it.”

“I _do_ ,” he says. “I do appreciate it. It’s just that…” Alex pauses. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

“Like shit it doesn’t. Come on. Spill.”

Alex looks up at her. “Swear you’re not gonna judge me?”

“I’ll make no such promise.”

“Fine,” he says. “I’m not gonna tell you then.”

“All right, all right,” she says, throwing her hands up. “I promise. Now tell me everything.”

So Alex tells her all the delightful turns his day has taken, making sure to place a special emphasis on the catalytic coffee maker she’s wrecked, and how he’s managed to insult a well-meaning, minimum wage-earning barista, and on top of everything gets him fired.

“Wait, what exactly did you tell him?” 

Alex tells her.

Anna’s jaw drops in disbelief, then she whacks him hard on the arm. “Alexander Alexandrovich! How could you say such a thing?” 

“I was in a sour mood, okay?”

“When are you not?” she says, rolling her eyes. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Gee, thanks,” he says. “And I am, by the way. If you haven’t noticed.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“I know.”

“That poor boy,” Anna says. “Jesus, I can’t believe you would say that. I wouldn’t be surprised if you made the news tonight.”

“What?” Alex is puzzled. What does have to do with anything?

“It makes sense,” she replies. “For all we know he’s selling your rude ass out to the reporters as we speak. I mean, I wouldn’t blame him. A, you’ve gotten him fired. B, he’s probably in need of money now that he doesn’t have a job because _you’ve_ gotten him fired. And C, you deserve it.”

Alex hasn’t thought about that. What if it does happen? It can go south real fast once the front office finds out. They’re always nagging all of them about how they’re public figures, that theirreputation is representative of the whole Habs organization, and that any untoward behavior in public will not be tolerated.

He must have looked pretty alarmed because the next thing Anna says is, “or it could be that he won’t. You said he didn’t seem to recognize you. Maybe he doesn’t know who you are.”

“But his boss does,” he says. “Ex-boss. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It’s not like there’s anything else I can do about it.”

Anna reaches out to pat his head. “There, there,” she says. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m really sorry I broke your coffee maker.”

Alex shrugs. “Shit happens.”

**x**

That night they lose to the Bruins in a shootout. 

Alex had a chance to tie it and lead the team to a fourth round, but as he charged toward the goal he put too much sauce on his shot and fired wide.

No one in the team blames him for their loss, but he can’t shake off the feeling that it’s his burden to carry. Rationally he knows that this isn’t true. It’s an absurd thought to even consider, but it’s a thought that follows him all the way home.


	2. The Tough Customer

They kept losing to the Bruins. Game 5 ended in a double-overtime with Marchand scoring the game-winner on a power play 16:00 into the second overtime. And tonight in Game 6, Bergeron scored two power play goals while Rask made 32 saves for the Bruins in a 5–0 win.

Alex throws a disgusted look at the opposite side of the rink where the Bruins are a tangle of sticks and limbs, their faces ablaze with celebratory glee. He skates off the rink with his shoulder slumped and a bitter taste in his mouth.

The second round of the playoffs should have ended in Game 4, when they still had the upper hand and victory seemed so easy, within reach; everything had been lining up for them. Now they’re on the precipice of missing the Conference Finals. 

How the fuck did they get here?

The mood in the locker room is somber. Gone are the high spirits which had suffused the room earlier tonight. Now it’s been replaced by a sense of quiet desperation so palpable they all refuse to meet each other’s eyes as they strip off their gear, keeping mostly to themselves, not talking very much.

While Marky and Patch take post-game media, Alex heads to the showers and tries to wash the stink of tonight’s failure off of him. He can’t wait to get home and sulk in private, maybe even put on a movie to help him pass out. 

It seems like a perfectly good plan until Shawzy comes up to him as he’s changing into his clothes and asks whether he’s up for a couple of drinks with Nate and some of the younger guys. It’s just gonna be a small group, Shawzy promises, a quiet affair.

Well, what the heck, Alex shrugs. He can use some alcohol right about now. Besides, what’s the worst thing that can happen? This day's been shot to hell. So he agrees to meet them at the bar and starts packing up. 

Once his bags are loaded in the car, Alex calls his parents and speaks with them for a while as he's wont to do. They’re still in the arena with Anna, they’re saying, and they want to know how much longer he’s gonna take so that they can all head out to dinner. Because by now they know how he is after a tough loss, and because they’re both amazing parents, they’re pretty understanding when Alex tells them that he’s pretty beat and he’ll just see them tomorrow, if that’s okay. Of course it’s okay, his mom says, just try to rest well, get a good night’s sleep, and they will see him tomorrow, love you, here’s dad. His dad takes over the line then and says, in all his parental earnestness, that they can still turn it around in Game 7, and that he focus on not letting tonight’s game get into his head. Alex feels marginally better after he hangs up.

He takes his time driving to the bar, stopping for gas, checking his e-mails and social media. He quits when his feed starts to fill with clips and photos and links about tonight's game. He puts his phone back in his pocket. When Alex finally arrives, spotting their booth toward the back, he wonders what Shawzy’s definition of “small group” is, because the booth is quite packed. Aside from the names he had been promised would be there, a couple of other guys are there too. Mitchy is there. Emelin is there. The Russians are there and even the dads are there—Patch, Pricey, Pleky, Petey. 

As it turns out, Pricey had somehow caught wind of their plan in the locker room and relayed it to Pleky, who then asked Patch whether or not he wanted to come, and Patch, instead of shooting the idea down like he normally does, decided to come with and invited the rest of the team.

So there they are, in a dim and relatively crowded pub at 11 in the evening, licking their wounds the only way they know how, in thefraternal tradition of drowning their sorrows with alcohol. There’s something strangely comforting about the whole thing. 

Misery does love company.

Strangely enough, or perhaps not really, no one mentions anything about tonight’s game. They talk instead about wives and girlfriends and children, talk about pretty Patricia from the front office and stories about comrades who had long been traded or retired, talk about even Therrien's sacking, but they never once bring up anything that has happened in the past three hours, and Alex is thankful for it.

As the night wears on and the beer keeps coming, Alex feels the tension slowly drain from him. He thinks warmly that it’s in small moments such as this that he’s most grateful for having this motley crew of assholes for teammates.

Soon enough they’re left with the dregs of their third round of beer, at which point Patch finally puts his foot down and allows the team one last round, then they are all to go straight to bed and show up early for tomorrow’s morning skate. Everyone gives their assent.

“Chucky, you’re up,” Patch says.

Alex grumbles about it, but nonetheless squeezes past Nate and out of the booth. At the bar he dutifully orders for their table, handing the bartender his credit card.

As he waits for the transaction to go through, he looks aimlessly around the bar. His eyes is drawn to the large TV overhead showing a replay of a tennis match, and he wonders if their game was shown here earlier. Alex shakes himself mentally; he’s doesn’t want to think about any of it tonight. 

He shifts his attention to the people at the bar, glancing at their faces as they capped off their Friday night with a drink or two, and that’s when he spots him, spots that boyish face a couple of seats down the bar. 

Alex blinks his vision clear, wondering if his eyes are playing tricks on him.

They aren’t.

That’s Brendan, all right, and in front of him is perhaps the pinkest,brightest cocktail Alex has ever laid eyes on. Even his sister won’t come anywhere near it. Well, maybe that’s an unfair comparison, since Anna drinks vodka like it’s water.

Before he realizes what he’s doing, he's crosses the distance between them.

It’s only when he gets really close does he notice another person in the picture—an unremarkably good-looking man with a beard nursing what appears to be gin and tonic—and it is this bearded man who sees him there hovering like a creep. The man’s eyes widen, and the hand clutching his glass freezes.

Brendan pauses and turns around to follow his friend’s gaze.

“Hey, Brendan,” Alex says, hating how small and uncertain his voice sounded.

At first it doesn’t seem as if Brendan is seeing Alex’s face at all, what with his eyes all glassy and unfocused, but then his grin fades.

“Great,” he sighs. “It’s you.”

It occurs to Alex that Brendan's a little bit drunk. “Hey, uh, can we talk, if that’s okay?”

“We're doing it now, aren't we?”

“Maybe somewhere a little more private?” Alex’s ears turn a bright shade of pink, like the color of Brendan’s cosmopolitan or whatever it is. 

Brendan narrows his eyes at him in suspicion. “Why, so you can hurl more insults at me? Forget it. Whatever you have to say to me, you can say in front of my friend Prusty here so he can punch your face on my behalf.” Brendan claps his friend on the shoulder. “I gotta warn you, though. He throws a pretty mean hook.”

The Prusty guy gapes at Brendan, then shakes his head at Alex. “I’m not gonna punch you,” he says.

Brendan jerks his head at him. “You won’t?”

“Nah, dude,” he says. “I’m not gonna punch Alex Galchenyuk in the face.”

“Some friend you are,” Brendan mutters, and then turns to face Alex. “I’m listening.”

Alex scratches the back of his neck. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry for, you know, what happened a couple of days ago,” he says, trying not to stumble over his words. “It wasn’t right, what I said. It was rude and unkind. I was just having a bad day and I didn’t mean to say any of it—“

“You did, though.”

Alex pauses. “All right, maybe I did mean a _little_ bit of it, but I shouldn't have said it, and I’m sorry that you heard it.”

Brendan frowns. “I lost my job because of you.”

“I know,” Alex says, fixing his eyes on the floor. “I went back that morning to apologize but they said you no longer worked there.”

Brendan looks surprised at this, but easily recovers.

“What, is your conscience keeping you up at night? In your swanky penthouse?” he says, shaking his head. “You're lucky it was me. What if you got a single mother fired instead? Or worse, what if it was someone with a disability? All because you were having”—at this he makes air quotes with his fingers—“a bad day. Do you know how hard it is to find a job these days?” Brendan says, jabbing a finger at Alex. “Oh, right, you don’t, because you’re a millionaire! And yeah, I googled you after you got me fired, you mr. hotshot hockey player, and you know what? I’m so glad you’re struggling in the playoffs right now because that means there’s still balance in the world. That’s karmic retribution.”

What most catches Alex off guard is the fact that Brendan's taken an interest in hockey out of his displeasure for him. He doesn't know whether or not he should be proud of it. Probably not.

“I already said I was sorry,” Alex says defensively.

Brendan reaches for his drink, downs the rest of it, and then tells Alex, "good." When he stands, he looks suddenly so drained. “Let's go, Prusty.” 

Reluctantly, Prusty finishes off his drink and turns to follow.

“Wait!” Alex calls after them.

Brendan turns and quirks an eyebrow. “Is there anything else?” 

“Aren't you even going to accept my apology?”

Brendan seems to consider this. “No,” he says, then walks away.

Alex stares at their retreating back until the bartender gets his attention to give him his card back.

Walking back to their table, Alex rolls in his head what Brendan said about balance and shit. If what he said is true and their losing streak is karma’s way of saying he fucked up, then they’re in big trouble.  Thank god Alex doesn’t believe in such nonsense.


	3. I’ve Been Wrong, I’ve Been Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is perhaps my favorite chapter in the whole story. I hope you have fun reading it as much as I had fun writing it.
> 
> Also, not to make excuses for sloppy workmanship, but I've been editing this chapter for a few hours now and so some typos and errors may have escaped my notice. I apologize in advance and please ignore them as much as you can.

Alex has done his fair share of crazy things over the course of his life, and yet this right here is at least in his top three, but then again desperate times call for desperate measures. So what if he has to sacrifice his pride if it means saving the whole team in the process?

_Take one for the team_ , _Alexander_ , he tells himself.

Alex draws a deep breath and raps on the door. Silence. He knocks again, this time a little louder. No one answers. He stares at the address scribbled on the piece of paper in his hand, then back at the door marked “3B.” 

They wouldn’t give him the wrong address, would they? Alex raises his fist and tries for the third time. 

This time there’s a faint shuffling behind the door, and the sound of the lock unlatching. When the door finally opens it reveals a dead-eyed Brendan sporting a massive case of bedhead. He is yawning and rubbing his eyes, but when he sees Alex standing in front of him, he does a double take and freezes.

It occurs to Alex then that each time they bump into each other, the poor guy always seems to be in one state of confusion or another. And it doesn’t help that Alex looks pretty manic himself, standing there wild-eyed, hair unwashed, wearing a sweaty pullover hoodie and mesh shorts over his leggings.

Brendan’s face does this thing where myriad expression crosses it but never settles on any, his mouth moving like a fish’s out of water. “How did…what…why are you here?” he stutters.

Funny he should ask, because until this morning Alex felt emotionally prepared to move on from the whole Brendan episode in his life. That is, until shit started to hit the fan during morning skate, and what Brendan said about karmic retribution came hammering on his mind’s door. Everything started to make sense, and he could no longer turn a blind eye to what was happening.

Three hours before, at seven-thirty, everyone arrived at the rink on time, as driven as they have ever been. Everyone except Brian Flynn. When coach rounded them up, he explained why he was missing: apparently the man had caught a horrible flu. Their physician opted to sit him out for at least a week lest he infect anyone else. This, of course, caused a wave of panic among the team: they had been with him the night before; for all the knew they could all fall sick any minute.

Then during one of their routine drive and shoot drills, Mitchy managed to partially slice his Achilles tendon. The poor fellow didn’t even notice it at first, simply left the rink after a while to have a look and there it was—and just like that, he’s out too.

It didn’t stop there. At one point Nate slipped and took an errant puck to the face. Doubling over, he started to bleeding all over the ice. Thankfully it wasn’t enough to take him out of commission for tomorrow’s game, but it was still pretty spooky.

The final straw was the breaking of Alex’s fourth stick. When his first stick snaped, he didn’t think much of it. Hockey sticks break; it’s fact. The second time, he attributed it to mere chance. The third time, he received weird looks from the boys. When it happened with his fourth stick after a slapshot, coach Julien started screaming bloody murder at him as though he was breaking his sticks on purpose.

He decided right then and there that he was going to put an end to this string of freak accidents once and for all and make amends with Brendan, whether or not he likes is.

So after morning skate ends, he rushed out of there, and drove to the one place he knew he could find Brendan—or at least the place from which he knew where to start looking for Brendan.

At Timmies he offered Valerie box seats to the next Habs game on home ice in exchange for Brendan’s home address. Although she wasn’t a huge hockey fan, she agreed when she discovered how much box seats are worth. 

Alex doesn’t tell Brendan any of this. 

Instead, he says “It doesn’t matter how I got here. I need something from you.”

Brendan crosses his arms. “And what’s that?”

“I need you to accept my apology and I need you to really mean it.”

“Dude, what the hell?”

“And I won’t leave until you do.”

“You don’t force forgiveness out of people,” Brendan says. “That’s not how it works.” 

“Fine,” says Alex. “I’ll just wait here then.” To drive the point home, he plops down on the floor and gets comfortable. This time he isn’t taking a ‘no’ for an answer.

“Or I can just call the police. How about that?”

This surprises Alex. “You’re going to report me?”

“ _Yeah_.”

“For what?”

“You’re basically stalking me.”

Alex decides to bluff. “Do it,” he says. “When it comes down to it, it will be your word against mine. I don’t want to blow my own horn but we’re pretty friendly with the SPVM, and who do you think they’re gonna believe?”

Brendan jaw falls. Alex smirks up at him.

“You’re a menace,” Brendan grits out, and then slams the door.

After Brendan disappears, Alex stares at the door expecting it to fly open at minute. It remains shut. He reaches for his phone, but he remembers leaving it in his car.

Now this sucks.

His stomach is making its displeasure known, too. In his haste he wasn’t able to grab something to eat on the way over. There’s a protein shake in his car, and he contemplates whether he should fetch it. In the end he decides against it; if he leaves his spot even for a little while his vigil will lose all its credibility.

Ten minutes pass, then fifteen, then thirty. 

After a while he realizes that he may have overcommitted, but now that he’s there he might as well stick it out.

It isn’t long before post-practice drowsiness hits, and soon a veil of exhaustion settles over him. When his eyes grow heavy, he rests his head against the wall and lets his eyes flutter shut.

**x**

Alex stirs at the faint sound of a camera going off. When he blinks awake, he finds Brendan studying him with an unreadable expression on his face.

Brendan’s hair is wet. He’s also wearing a different set of clothes, and theres a backpack hanging over his shoulder.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m off to school, not that it’s any of your business,” he says, pocketing his phone.

“You go to school?” Alex doesn’t know why he finds this surprising.

Brendan snorts. “Serving moderately-priced beverages isn’t my calling, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Alex unsteadily gets on his feet. “I’ll drive you,” he says, massaging his stiff right leg.

“Nah, I don’t get in the cars of strangers.”

“But I’m not, though. You know me. You even know how much money I make,” says Alex.

Brendan hitches the bag up on his shoulder, pursing his lips as he considers the offer.

“You’re really creeping me out,” he says. “But okay, I guess.”

**x**

There’s a brief spell of awkward silence in the car, but it lasts only until Alex turns the music on and Oxxxymiron’s “[Признаки жизни](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV7xNtLD1wM) ” starts blaring from the subwoofers.

Brendan stares at him with displeasure. “Ugh, this is awful,” he says with a grimace.

Alex tries to hide his smile, but isn’t very successful. 

To Brendan’s credit, he manages to endure at least a minute of it.

“I can’t listen to this,” he says, then promptly highjacks the car’s sound system. He disconnects Alex’s phone and programs his in.

“Hey, my music!” protests Alex.

“I don’t know what that was, but music wasn’t it. Now, _this_ is what music is supposed to be,” he says, bobbing his head to song he’s just put on. 

Alex has no idea what the song is called, but he does know who sings it. There’s no doubting it.

It’s Nickelback.

He looks at Brendan in disbelief, searching for a hint of deceit in his face, but there’s none. The boy is even honest-to-god _singing_.

Alex wrenches his eyes away from Brendan, because as fascinating as the whole scene may be, he has no intention of crashing his car. Instead he contents himself with listening to this godawful band along with Brendan’s off-pitch voice singing, _I’ve been wrong, I’ve been down_. 

It’s not at all an unpleasant experience.

In the twenty minutes that it takes to drop Brendan off, Alex learns that Brendan has worse taste in music than his sister. In his playlist there’s Avril Lavigne, Shania Twain, Starship, Miley Cyrus, an assortment of country singers Alex has absolutely no knowledge of, and more Nickelback.

Plenty of times Alex has a mind to poke fun of Brendan, but since this is a person whose good graces he wants to be in, he keeps his shut and just shakes his head.

“So this is me,” says Brendan as they near his building, pointing at a spot where Alex can pull over.

Alex shifts the gear into park but doesn’t cut off the engine.

“Uh, thanks for the ride, I guess,” says Brendan as he unbuckles his seat belt.

Before he can leave the car, however, Alex reaches out to touch his shoulder. “Do you wanna grab something to eat?” he says suddenly. “After your class, I mean. Later. It’s on me.”

Brendan blinks at him. “Why?” he says slowly, warily.

“I just want to do something nice,” he says.

Brendan huffs a laugh. “I’m not a charity case, you know. Not yet, at least,” he says, but he doesn’t sound bitter about it.

“I never said you were,” Alex says, playing with the string of his hoodie. “Besides, it’s free food. What do you gotta lose?”

“Well,” he says, chewing his bottom lip. “If you’re serious about it, you can pick me up here at six.”

Alex nods. “I can do that.”

**x**

For some reason that’s beyond Alex, they end up at Mont Royal eating the take out sandwiches they bought from Schwartz's. On the drive over—and then again on the long hike up—he asked Brendan why they were going there of all places, and all he said was that he likes it there, and that being there calms him down, plus the view of the city is pretty great.

On that score, he won’t contest Brendan. It is quite stunning, especially with the way the sun is going, but there’s entirely too much people there for his liking, drunk teenagers and couples wrapped in each other’s arms and old ladies whipping out their iPhones and selfie sticks. On the way up he was even stopped twice for photos, once for an autograph, and once to be told by a fervent middle-aged man that it was disappointing how they could allow the Bruins to make up lost ground.

It’s just not a place he’d actively seek out.

But as the brisk air grazes his unshaven face, and the bright oranges sink beyond the horizon to make way for the deep indigos of the early April twilight, Alex silently admits that it isn’t so bad after all.

“I feel weird about this,” says Brendan beside him. He’s looking out over the city below. “It’s like I’m forcing you to spend time with me or something, even though you came out of your own volition.”

“I really don’t mind it,” Alex shrugs. It’s the truth, too.

“That’s why it’s so strange.” Brendan turns to him, half his facesoaked in the fading light, and then smiles. “Okay, tell me why you’re really doing this. I promise I won’t get angry.”

There’s something about Brendan’s face, so open and pure and free of guile, that pinches Alex’s insides. He tears his eyes away from his bright blue eyes and looks out over the city.

“Okay, but don’t laugh.”

Brendan nods, smiling.

“I’m serious.”

“I won’t!”

Brendan listens intently, and like he promised, doesn’t laugh,although he doesn’t quite lose the grin on his face the whole time. When Alex finishes recalling his series of rather unfortunate events, the sky has dimmed significantly, the the city of Montreal before him a collection of tiny bright lights.

“Come on, you don’t honestly believe I’m the reason for all that?” says Brendan, chuckling. “Sadly, I don’t have that kind of cosmic power at my disposal. Oh, god if only I did. Although I’m flattered that you’d think that.”

Deep down Alex supposes that he doesn’t really believe any of it, but sometimes it’s easy to look for convenient answers to complex questions, invent patterns out of disparate circumstances; and loath as he is to admit it, he does often fall in that expedient trap. 

“You have to admit, though, it’s pretty freaky. I didn’t even shower after morning skate because I was scared I’d slip and bash my head in.”

“It’s actually more funny than freaky,” says Brendan, grinning his charming grin again. “And you thought making it up to me would reverse the bad juju?”

“Fine, mock me. I’ve never experienced so much misfortune in my life, you know.”

“You get what you give,” says Brendan, shrugging. “That’s how I see it, at least. If you think you’re unlucky, then the world will conspire to make it happen. If you see yourself as a failure, then everything you do is going to be a doomed commitment. And if you cause a barista to lose his job, then you’ll lose in other ways, too. That’s just how things have always been. So to think that I have anything to do with your”—he makes air quotes with his fingers—“misfortunes is a flawed premise.”

“You gotta stop doing that.”

“What, _this_?” Brendan repeats the gesture.

“Yeah, you look ridiculous.”

“Aww, ridiculous is okay, Chuck.” Brendan coos, nudging Alex with his shoulder. “Never be afraid to look ridiculous. You just do you. Who the hell cares what others think? I like looking ridiculous. I happen to think ridiculous is a good look on me.”

_Really_ good. 

Alex turns away and fixes his gaze at a distant point.

“So…” says Brendan, “since it’s still honesty hour, I have my own confession to make.”

Alex is intrigued. “Okay?”

Brendan blushes and looks down at his feet. “Last night at the bar,” he says slowly, “I was actually there because I was kinda celebrating your loss.” He snorts when he sees Alex’s face. “Hey, you were a jerk to me. I’m entitled to gloat.”

The memory of Brendan’s at the bar with his pink drink, for whatever weird reason, is so funny to Alex now that he bursts out laughing. “I deserve it,” Alex says.

Apparently, Brendan knew nil about hockey prior to their Timmies encounter, and he went home that day demanding that his neighbor Prusty explain to him the nuts and bolts of the sport, and has since then kept track of the Habs, particularly their losses.

“So what kind of sport are you into, then?”

“I’m more of a baseball kinda guy.”

When Alex turns, he finds Brendan’s eyes on him studying his face. “What?” he asks consciously.

“You look different when you smile,” says Brendan, nodding like he’s understanding something for the first time. “You should do it more often.”

Alex scrunches his face. “Shut up,” he says. “I smile a lot.”

“Yeah, and I’m a six foot tall babe magnet. Let’s not kid ourselves here, Chuck.”

Alex laughs at that.

They watch the sky until darkness descends upon them, neither of them speaking very much.

“I guess you’re pretty okay,” says Brendan after a while. “I still think you’re an entitled asshole, and you have a personality of a tree stump, but all things considered, you’re not that bad.”

“Gee, thanks for the ringing endorsement.”

“Yeah, so I think I’m gonna let you off the hook now.” Brendan beams up at him. “Consider your apology officially accepted.”

“Really?”

“Yup,” he says, nodding. “Just promise never to harass any more baristas, okay? We have a difficult enough job as it is.”

Alex extends a hand, and they shake on it.

**x**

It’s well past ten in the evening when they pull up outside Brendan’s apartment.

“So thanks for today,” Brendan says as he unbuckles his seatbelt. “Good luck in Boston. I’ll cheer you on from Prusty’s couch, you know, because I’m poor and I don’t have a TV. And I swear not to send you any more bad juju.” 

At this Brendan laughs this low, warm, rumbling laugh, and Alex decides that he likes how it sounds. 

“Ha ha, hilarious,” Alex deadpans, but he’s smiling too.

Brendan grabs his bag and hops out of the car. Waving at Alex one last time, he disappears into the night.


	4. Chapter 4

Alex tries to look for Brendan in the stands despite the fact that all he can see is a dark, loud, undulating mass. The thought that Brendan is out there watching sends a thrill down Alex’s spine. As they warmed up for tonight’s game, he scans the sea of faces for Brendan’s, skating again and again toward the section where he knows Brendan would be.

The funny thing is that he doesn’t even know whether Brendan’s here at all. He hasn’t replied to any of Alex’s messages.

During one of their conversations, Brendan had said that he hoped he’d someday have the chance to see a game in person, since Prusty’s been telling him it’s not quite the same as watching a game on a 32-inch television. Alex found this weird because does Brendan not know who he’s been talking to the past week? So Alex sent him tickets for tonight’s Conference Finals opener, along with a note that says, _Come see us destroy the Blackhawks. Bring Prusty along_.

The last time he checked his phone after their pre-game meeting with their coaches, there was still no response from him. He considered calling, but he didn’t want to smother Brendan.

Maybe he has just forgotten to respond (likely), or probably didn’t get the tickets at all (unlikely). Either way, Alex pushes it out of his mind to deal with later. They have a game to win.

**x**

At the front office Patricia’s at her desk, speaking on the phone trapped between her shoulder and left ear. Seeing Alex peek his head into her room, she holds up a finger and tells the person on the other line that it would be great if they could send in the affidavit first thing in the morning so that they could have it processed ASAP and then says goodbye.

“Hi, Alex,” she says brightly, surprised to find him there. “What can I do for you?”

He plops down on one of the chairs at her desk and asks if the tickets he had reserved for tonight’s game were claimed.

“Let’s have a look,” she says, turning to the computer. She pulls up a window and starts typing in the details in a database of sorts. “That’s Row EE, Section 101, correct?” Alex nods. “Hmm. It doesn’t seem like they were.”

“Oh.”

Patricia turns to him, her head tilted. “Lady troubles?” she asks.

Alex huffs a laugh. “No, it’s nothing like that,” he says. “It was for a…friend.”

“Right,” she says knowingly. “Do you want us to run a background check on her, make sure she’s clean?”

Alex snorts. “That won’t be necessary.”

“You sure? It’s basically our job to do these things.”

“I know,” he says. “And I’m sure.”

Patricia nods. “Is there anything else?” she asks, and when Alex says no, smiles at him sympathetically. “Better luck next time.”

As Alex leaves her office, he gets the feeling that she isn’t talking about tonight’s game.

**x**

He texts Brendan that night once he’s eaten and changed and settled in bed. It’s fifteen minutes past twelve and he doesn’t even know if Brendan’s awake at this point, but maybe it’s this uncertainty compounded by tonight’s loss that makes him add in the sad emoji with a single tear running down its cheek.

“U didnt come :’(”

Five minutes later his phone pings.

“sorry! had to study for finals,” the reply says. Not three seconds later, another text comes. It’s just a row of skull emojis.

Alex smiles at that. “It’s ok,” he texts back. “I sucked anyway.”

“early days! #GoHabsGo”

“Lol. Tnx.” 

“:P”

“How’s studying?”

“i think my eyes are gonna fall out.”

“That’s y u shoulda come out 2nite, taken a break or sumthing”

“thanks for the tickets btw. now i feel bad for wasting them.”

“It’s alrite. U can come next time.”

“next time?”

“Game 2 on Wednesday. I’ll send the tix so plan ahead. dont want u to fail.”

Alex waits for a reply, but his phone remains silent. Four minutes later he wonders if Brendan has fallen asleep. He sends another text. “It’d mean a lot 2 me if ur there.“

The reply comes a minute later. “sure i’ll be there.”

As he starts typing his response, Brendan sends another text. “anyway, i’m going to bed. good night!”

Alex deletes what he’s thus far typed, and composes another reply. “Ok. G’night.”

**x**

They perform better against the Blackhawks in Game 2. The first period ends with three goals on them, and although the Blackhawks managed to score three of their own in the second period, in the third Alex scores with 58 seconds left.

Alex is forced to do post-game interview after, but once he’s done his bare minimum he makes a quick work of showering and changing into his clothes, and then gets out of there.

There’s a message waiting on his phone from Brendan. 

“nice breakaway goal :)” It was sent thirty minutes ago.

Instead of replying to the message he dials Brendan’s number. When Brendan finally answers, his voice on the other line is muffled by the sounds of traffic.

“Where are you?” Alex asks, and Brendan says that he’s walking to and is near Bonaventure station. Alex frowns. He was hoping that maybe they could have dinner or something, and when he says this, Brendan says he’s just remembered he has a paper he needs to send tonight and that he’ll take a rain check. Alex tries to tamp down his disappointment. “I’ll drop you off at your place then,” he says. “It’s fine, really. Don’t be ridiculous, that’ll take you an hour. Do you want to send in your paper or not? Fine, wait for me outside Marriott. Give me five minutes.”

Brendan shakes his head when he gets in Alex car. “You really don’t have to, you know,” he says. “And shouldn’t you be celebrating with your team?”

Alex shrugs. “It’s too early for that,” he replies. “Now, when’s the deadline for this paper?”

“Before midnight.”

Alex reads the time on his dashboard. He has an hour and forty-five minutes. “Seatbelt,” he says and drives off. 

After a while Alex says, “Did you have fun at the game, at least?”

Brendan turns to him with a soft smile on his face. “It was great,” he says. “At first I found it a little weird that you could hear all these sounds without someone talking over everything, like there’s something missing, almost, but I think I like it better that way. And you can actually see the whole surface of the ice, which was pretty neat.”

Alex nods. “That’s how you understand the flow of each play,” he explains. “If you’re just focused on the puck like on TV, all you see are a series of fragmented rushes along the ice. You miss how players maneuver into position, engage in an attack, or sneak behind the defense.”

Until tonight, Brendan tells him, he had no idea how fast the game really is, and how terrifying it is in person to see (and hear) a player hitting the boards.

Alex grins at the way Brendan recalls his experience with his first NHL game. It’s always fascinating to Alex to hear how others see his life, how they see the game through a fresh lens. Hockey is the only thing he’s ever known, and to be able to share a piece of it to someone else is for him an infinitely gratifying thing.

Brendan does genuinely sound as if he enjoyed the experience, and so when they reach his apartment building, Alex asks if he’s keen to watch Game 5.

The look Brendan gives him is uncomfortable, to say the least. It puzzles Alex.

“You know that you can say no, right?” he says.

“No, I know,” says Brendan.

“Is it a money thing?” he asks, because everyone’s a little iffy when it comes to the subject, and so he’d understand if Brendan is, too. “If that’s what you’re worried about, then I’ll have you know we’re given complementary tickets for every game. I’m literally not spending a dime on them.”

Brendan shakes his head. “It’s not that,” he says, refusing to meet Alex’s eyes.

Suddenly it all becomes clear to Alex: the reticence, the unreturned text messages, the reluctance to come to his games—of course he doesn’t want Alex around. He doesn’t know why it’s taken him this long to figure it out.

Even in the darkness of the car, Alex’s cheeks flush. He is hoping that the ground would open up and swallow him whole.

“Uh, you know what, don’t worry about it,” he forces himself to say. “You’re probably sick of my face already, so I, uh, I’ll be out of your hair.”

“No!” Brendan reaches out to touch Alex’s arm. “That’s not it. It’s just that I’m really confused. I mean…what are you doing?”

“I’m trying to be a good friend.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way but you’re…you. I’m just someone who you had the misfortune to meet. You really have no reason to keep hanging around.”

“But I want to,” he says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and it kind of is.

“See? That’s the thing.”

“I don’t understand,” says Alex, wrinkling his brows. “So you’re saying we can’t be friends because, what, I happen to play hockey and you don’t?”

“Yes?” 

“That’s stupid.”

“I know.”

“Okay, I’ll leave.”

“I don’t what that, either.”

“What are we gonna do then?”

Brendan considers this for a moment. “Well, I’m going inside because I really do have a paper to submit,” he says, then slowly smiles up at Alex, “but you can come inside and help me finish off a box of leftover pizza while I work. If you like.”

Alex cuts off the engine before Brendan can change his mind, and is first person out of the car.


	5. In Warm Water

“Okay, are you’re gonna tell me what the fuck is going on?” Nate says, setting his fork down on his plate.

“What?”

“Dude, you’ve been looking at me weird for the last thirty minutes. Do I have something on my face?”

Save for the fading bruise he had gotten from the errant puck, his face looks about right. “No, your ugly face looks about right.”

Nate narrows his eyes. “If you stare at me one more time, Chucky, I swear to god, I’m going to punch you in the mouth.”

“I’d like to see you try, asshole,” he shoots back, turning his attention back to the broiled salmon in front of him. 

To Alex’s defense he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. It’s just that he has this question he wants to ask Nate, but doesn’t know how exactly to articulate it. Of all the guys in the team, he’s the closest with Nate, and if he were to receive good advice, he’s most likely going to get it from him.

“All right,” says Alex after a while, when he can no longer to hold it in, “so hypothetically speaking, what would you do if you meet this really nice person, you’ve been hanging out for a while, and now you want to show them you’re interested but at the same time don’t want to scare them off because, you know, you’re a kind of a minor celebrity. How would you go about doing…that. Hypothetically.”

Alex feels a little ridiculous being so oblique about the topic and with his pronouns; it’s not like Nate doesn’t know his preferences. Still, the mere fact that he’s bringing it up to one of his best mates is awkward to say the least.

“Does this person have a hypothetical name?” Nate asks, playing along.

Alex’s gaze fall on his plate, wondering if he should say it. “Brendan,” he tells him eventually. “His name’s Brendan.”

Nate nods, spearing a piece of veal and putting it into his mouth. “Write him a poem,” Nate says in a completely serious voice.

Alex glowers at him. He’s no Nabokov, and even in Russian he can’t write well.

“Or,” Nate says when he sees Alex’s face, “you can take him out on a date. You can never go wrong with a dinner and a movie. That should get the point across.”

He rolls this idea in his head. It’s been a long time since he’s gone on a date, but a dinner and a movie is something he thinks he can do. It shouldn’t be too hard. Right?

“May I ask how long you’ve known this Brendan guy?”

“Almost two months.”

“And I’m finding this out just now? I’m feeling the love here, Chucky.”

“It never came up.” He shrugs. “Besides, I’m not even sure he likes me at all.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know, man. Sometimes he acts like tolerates me. Then the next day I’d wake up with like five selfies from him. He’s very back and forth.”

“Do you think it’s the hockey thing?”

“I think it’s the Alex thing.”

“I’ll tell you this,” Nate says. “It’s been two months. If he’s not interested, he wouldn’t be around this long.”

Alex would be lying he if he says he doesn’t find that reassuring, but Nate’s expression makes him reconsider. There’s a hard look on his face and he’s looking straight at Alex.

“I hate to be the person who rains on your parade, but as your friend, I feel like it’s my duty to ask: Are you sure he’s worth the trouble? The league isn’t exactly a paragon of virtue and equality. They won’t care what you bring to the table once they find out you like boning boys, too. I don’t want you to risk everything for nothing.”

Of course Alex has thought about these things since he’s been drafted, especially on nights when he’s tired and his heart is heavy and he’s afflicted by a little self-pity, but it’s too early to be troubling himself with these things, and tells Nate just that. 

“Sorry, dude,” says Nate. “I didn’t mean to go all doom and gloom on you. I just wanted to make sure you know what you’re doing. I mean, a regular sex life is pretty fucking amazing, but at what cost?”

Alex nods. “I know that,” he says, appreciating the gesture. “And you don’t have to worry about Brendan. He won’t, like, expose me or anything. He’s a good Canadian boy.”

This seems to satisfy Nate, because he doesn’t ask anymore questions about Brendan for the rest of dinner. 

**x**

The following evening, Alex finds himself alone in his apartment packing his bags for their away game tomorrow in Chicago. Once he’s done, he settles on the couch and watches the tape from their previous game against the Blackhawks, occasionally pausing the video to jot down notes on a legal pad.

He’s in the middle of scribbling a stray observation when his phone starts trilling on the coffee table. His heart skips a beat when he sees the name on the display.

“Chucky!” Brendan says when he answers. His enthusiasm throws Alex for a loop. 

“Hi,” replies Alex.

“So…what are you doing?”

Alex looks down at the pad resting on his lap. “Not much,” he says.

“Great! I’m having a little get together. You should come.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s the occasion?”

“It’s my birthday!” Brendan says cheerfully.

Now that he’s mentioned it, Alex can hear music and people on the other line. “It’s your birthday,” he deadpans. 

“Yup! May 6th!”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I’m telling you now,” he says. “Please?”

“Are you drunk?”

“Noooo,” he drawls out. “Okay, I may have had a few Jägerbombs. Come on, Chucky! I’m doing Blow Jobs soon!”

That’s all the persuading Alex needs. 

“I’ll be there.”

**x**

Brendan’s party isn’t too bad. There aren’t a whole lot of people there, about sixteen in all, which Alex is secretly thankful for. They don’t seem to care that he’s kind of a big deal in Montreal and are all pretty warm to him—except for this one mouthy black dude who obviously knows his hockey and keeps harping on about Alex’s shortcomings as a centerman, particularly during their last game, how he sat out three minor penalties that cut a little into his ice time and how he struggled in the faceoff circle during the second period. For the most, part though, he’s having a great time.

Brendan is pretty loose, too, smiling and laughing at everything. When Alex arrived, Brendan quite literally threw himself at him and started yapping on about how glad he was that Alex came. If his hands lingered on Brendan a little longer than they should have during that ten-second hug, then sue him. After that Brendan bolted off to mingle with his friends from school, leaving Alex to fetch himself beer from one of the ice buckets laying about. 

At one point he moves to the kitchenette where there are less people, and chats up Valerie who leers at him the whole time until she joins her friends outside for a smoke.

Alex is nursing his second beer when his eyes find Brendan again, his face so bright and open while he plays darts with his uncouth friend whose name Alex later finds out as P.K. It is then that hestarts thinking about how Brendan’s lips would feel like against his, how he would react if Alex were to grab his face and smash their lips together.

It’s a pretty thought, a thought he would have continued to play and replay in his head if it isn’t for Prusty who suddenly encroaches on his personal space and breaks his reverie.

“Chucky!” he says, slinging a strong arm around his shoulder. “Is it okay if I call you Chucky?"

"Sure, yeah."

Prusty reeks badly of alcohol, but he appears to be completely in charge of his speech and motor skills. Alex is surprised.

“Kissed and made up with Gally, I see,” he says, nodding. “That's good. You know, I actually advised him to drag it out, make you grovel a little and extort perks and freebies from the Habs, because dude, that was a dick move, what you did, but seeing as you’re pretty generous, I guess all is well.” 

Prusty pauses, his gaze following Alex’s, which is still trained on Brendan. “Now that we're on the subject,” he says, voice dropping considerably, “what is it that you're trying to get out of it? Because I see what you're trying to do, and on any other occasion with any other dude, I'd be pretty supportive. Us bros gotta stick together. But Gally’s pretty special to me, you see. He’s the kindest person I know, but he also has the worst track record when it comes to men. His last boyfriend, for example. That motherfucker was a crackhead, and it took our poor Gally six whole months to notice. And before that, the guy he was seeing for over two years cheated on him the whole time and had the nerve to dump him. Gallyalways chooses to see the good in people, sometimes to a fault. I don’t want to see his hear get broken all over again. Now, if all you want is a quick lay, I’m pretty sure there’s—”

“I don’t want that,” Alex says. “I’m not looking for that.”

Prusty studies him for a moment. “You sure, because let me tell you, someone has to stand up for the little people who can’t defend themselves, and I wear that responsibility very seriously.”

Alex meets Prusty’s steely gaze head on. "Is that a threat?”

"A threat?” Prusty snorts. “Come on, man. You're Alex Galchenyuk. I’m a thirty-something fireman on the verge of a breakdown. I’m basically a garbage person. I can’t touch you. All I'm saying is that if you break Gally’s heart, you best believe I will do everything to hurt you. One way or another I’m going to make sure you feel it, yeah?”

Alex nods.

“I don’t know the fuck why, but I do believe you have a good heart. Don’t prove me wrong.” Prusty claps him on the back—hard. "Now that that's out of the way. Let's do shots!”

Prusty gathers everyone then and decides that they’re all playing a game of Vodka Roulette, but instead of filling one shot glass with vodka and the rest with water, Prusty fills one glass with a 190-proof Everclear and the rest with vodka.

While Prusty gathers the glasses at and fills them with alcohol, warning everyone not to peek, Brendan comes up to Alex and tugs at his sleeves.

“Feel free to opt out, okay?” he says, smiling up at him. “You have a game to play tomorrow, and I’d feel really bad if you wake up in the morning with a hangover.”

Brendan looks so painfully sincere that Alex finds himself wanting to impress him. “I can handle it,” he says, shrugging.

At the count to three, they all take the shots together. A collective groan sweeps the room. 

Alex thinks, as the liquid burns a hole through his esophagus, that he might as well have drunk gasoline, because this is what he imagines gasoline tastes like. Beside him, Brendan is clutching his arm and giggling into his shoulder.

While they all retch and groan in revulsion, Prusty is laughing his face off. As it turns out, none of the glass contained vodka. It was all Everclear. 

When the clock strikes 1:30, Alex decides to head out and bids everyone goodbye. He feels neither drunk nor sober, so he figures he’ll just have to drive extra carefully.

Brendan walks him outside to his car, and once there Alex turns to him. 

“I actually got you something.” Alex unlocks the car door and reaches inside for Brendan’s present. When he hands it over, apprehension suddenly fills hm.

_What if he hates it?_ he thinks. _Maybe I should have thought of something else, because, how narcissistic of me to give him that of all things?_

Alex shuffles uneasily on his feet as Brendan unrolls the heavy fabric, holding it out in front to properly look at it.

Brendan stares at the red-white-blue jersey with “GALCHENYUK” emblazoned on it, and then up at Alex.

“So you have something to wear the next time we play home ice,” Alex says, blushing. “It’s my size so it’s a little big but it should fit, I think.” When Brendan still doesn’t speak, Alex is quick to add, “it’s cool if you don’t like it. I can give you something else. I just didn’t know what else to give you. It’s kind of a short notice—”

“I love it.”

Alex blinks at him. “Yeah?”

Brendan nods, grinning.

The next thing Alex knows, Brendan is wrapping his arms around his neck in a bone-crushing hug. Alex chuckles at the gesture and squeezes in return. 

“Thanks, Chucky,” Brendan mumbles against Alex’s neck.

Alex shivers at the feel of Brendan’s lips against his skin. “You’re welcome,” he says, reveling in the solid warmth in his arms. “I’ll see you when we get back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, as always!


	6. Color Me In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I was writing this chapter I stumbled upon this [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6rQ_npgY9M) of Chucky giving a tour of his apartment and couldn't stop laughing because he's visibly unimpressed with the host.

The first thing Alex does when they get back from Chicago after winning the conference final in Game 6 is send Brendan a text saying he should come over; they’re celebrating. The second thing he does when they get back from Chicago is turn his computer on and type “best date food to cook” on his browser. The top result he gets is a link to a Cosmopolitan article, which assures its readers that anyone can pull off any of these 11 dinners with “minimum sweat and swearing"—so he clicks that.

Halfway through the article, however, he almost gives up. There’sno way he can make any of them look the way they do in these photos. He thinks briefly of just taking Brendan out for dinner, buteventually decides against the idea: it seems to him too convenient to merit any real effort. 

In the end he resolves to step out of his comfort zone and tap into his inner Martha Stewart, choosing a seemingly doable meal that requires mostly just chopping and throwing everything into a skillet.

At seven he goes to work.

He gathers all the items he needs and puts them all in one spot on the counter. Occasionally consulting the recipe he had printed out and taped on the cupboard by the stove, Alex follows the directions as strictly as he can, slicing the tomatoes in quarters, cutting the kale in ribbons, searing the chicken thighs in each side until golden brown.

After a while, he assesses what he’s so far done. Sure, the tomatoes are cut a little irregular, and the chicken thighs are a shade shy of burnt, but they look decent for the most part. Once everything is in the skillet, just as the recipe instructs, he puts it in the oven to bake. He also takes out a bottle of riesling and pops it in the fridge.

Looking at the clock he debated whether or not he should take a shower. He supposes he can take one for ten minutes, so he does. In his closet he has trouble choosing what to wear, and loath as he is to admit it, he wishes Anna was there to advise. (Despite her sister’s objections, Alex thinks himself a sharp dresser, thankyouverymuch, but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to have some feminine input.) He’s not trying dress up exactly, but he wants to appear like he has actually put some effort to look nice. After much thought he slips into a black wool sweater, because you can never go wrong with black. But when he turns to the mirror he realizes his error: in his black sweater and black jeans and black shoes, he looks too washed out, like he’s headed to a casual funeral. He’s about to pick something else when the doorbell rings and echoes throughout the apartment. Taking one last look at the mirror, smoothing out his hair into place, he answers the door.

“Your doorman is an asshole,” Brendan says by way of greeting. “He kept asking me what my purpose of visit was and didn’t even believe I'm the person I claim to be even after I showed him my ID.”

“Uh, come on in,” Alex says, opening the door wider. “Sorry about that. They tightened the security after a crazy fan tried to sneak in pretending to be a deliveryman.”

Brendan’s eyes widen when he sees Alex’s huge picture windows, which offer a pretty stunning view of downtown Montreal.

“Woah,” he says, walking over to the windows. “Nice.”

Chuckling, Alex dims the lights in the living room to reduce the reflection on the glass, and then joins Brendan there. By now he’s gotten so used to the view that he no longer sees the wonder of it, but looking out the window now he tries to imagine what Brendan sees, the city lights as far as the eye can see, the steady stream of headlights up and down the road, the dark overcast skies. It’s really is a nice view.

“I was right.” Brendan turns to him looking pretty smug. “You live in a penthouse.”

Alex opens his mouth to reply but a sudden shill beeping grabs his attention. It takes him five full seconds to place the sound, and when he does he bolts to the kitchen.

A thin fog of it suffuses the whole kitchen, and slowly creeps its way into the living room. 

Turning the oven off, Alex takes out the smoldering skillet to the sink and runs water over it. It hisses, producing more smoke.

“Fuck,” he hisses, then notices the smoke alarm still going, so he turns to reset it.

With Brendan’s help they manage to open all windows and let some fresh air. They also open the front door for good measure.

Once the smoke has mostly dissipated, Brendan perches himself on one of the stools in the kitchen. “I didn’t know you cook,” he says.

“I don’t,” Alex replies, staring forlornly at the burnt skillet. The smell of smoke still hangs in the air.

“I can see why,” says Brendan, but there’s a fond expression on his face. “You didn’t have to, you know. I’m not exactly a culinary connoisseur. I would have been okay with cheap take out food.”

“That’s why I had to do it, expand your horizons a little bit,” says Alex.

“I’ll give you points for effort, though.”

“Thanks,” says Alex, smiling despite himself.

So that’s how they end up eating take out steak out of styrofoam containers forty minutes later, and it tastes majestic. Then there’s the wine, too, so the night isn’t entirely ruined.

**x**

Alex lets Brendan pick the movie, a decision he soon comes to regret. Brendan has a case of selection paralysis, it turns out; he keeps going back and forth between titles and genres and after literally ten minutes of his indecision Alex finally snaps.

“For fuck’s sake pick one already,” says Alex, his hand pointed to the screen in frustration.

“Okay, jeez.”

Brendan picks Ghostbusters because, he tells Alex, it’s really funny and also because he's a little insulted Alex has never seen it before.Once the opening credits starts to roll Brendan gets comfortable on the couch, grabbing one of the throw pillows and clutches it against his stomach.

Alex tries to pay attention to the movie, he really does, and for the first ten minutes he mostly succeeds, but his focus keeps drifting, and despite his efforts to shift his interest back to the television screen, he soon gives up on it altogether. 

It’s impossible to think of anything else with Brendan beside him,with his grinning face illuminated by the light from the TV, and the way his body would shake with laughter every once in a while.

There’s a good foot between them on the couch, and Alex, itching to touch Brendan and feel his body against him, does the only thing, the only thing he can think of to close their gap: he feigns a yawn and makes an elaborate show of stretching as he subtly puts his arm around him.

But Alex miscalculates Brendan’s position on the couch and ends upelbowing him on the side of his head. Brendan turns and stares, catching Alex with his arm awkwardly raised as though he’s asking a question. 

Alex can feel the blood rush to his face and ears and he immediately regrets the extra glass of riesling he shouldn’t have drunk.

Brendan burst out laughing.

“Real smooth, Chucky,” he says, leaning his head forward and then bringing Alex’s arm down around his shoulders.

Alex drops all pretenses then, pulling Brendan down against him so that his cheek is on top of Brendan’s head and his hand rests against Brendan’s chest.

“Comfy?” Brendan asks without taking his eyes away from the TV.

Alex nods.

This close he can smell Brendan. He smells like fresh apples and Old Spice. It’s ridiculous how easily he can get drunk off his scent.

A deep relief settles upon Alex. He knows this feeling very well. He’s felt this way once before, when he was drafted—not when his name was announced, and not even when he was celebrating with his mother and father and sister after the ceremony but in bed that night, after the disbelief of the day had been exhausted and a quiet contentment took its place.

Alex smiles and soaks it all in.

**x**

The movement is gentle, furtive but it’s enough to rouse him. From the little light left in the room, he can see Brendan carefully untangling himself from him. 

Alex rubs at his eyes.

“Sorry,” Brendan says quietly. “Didn’t mean to wake you.” From the looks of it, Brendan fell asleep too—his eyes are droopy and his hair a mess. 

“Where you going?”

“It’s late. I’m going home.”

“Absolutely not,” Alex mumbles as he stands up to stretch. “You’re staying the night. Come on.” He turns the TV off. In the darkness, he reaches out for Brendan’s hand and leads him upstairs.

Once they’re in the bedroom, Alex begins to strip until he only has his boxer briefs on. He stops when he feels a pair of eyes on him.

“We’re just sleeping,” he tells Brendan, pulling the covers back. “I swear.”

“It’s not that,” says Brendan, shaking his head. “I just…I didn’t realize you looked like that under all those padding.” 

Even in the dark Alex can see Brendan blush. “What, you thought I was fat?”

Brendan starts taking his clothes off too. “Not exactly,” he says as he joins Alex in bed.

Alex meant it when he said they’re just sleeping, and he also meant what he told Prusty about wanting more than a quick lay. At this point he’d gladly take whatever he can get from Brendan, even if it’s just a cuddle in front of the TV—so he keeps his hands to himself and lets sleep wash over him.

**x**

When he feels the gentle fingers stroking his bearded cheek, Alex swears he is dreaming. He must be. Only in dreams do touches like this feel electric and surreal in equal measure.

“Chucky?”

If it isn’t for Brendan’s hot breath against his ear, he would have continued thinking he’s dreaming. As it is that hot breath seems too real to be a figment of his imagination.

“Chucky, are you awake?”

“No.”

The hand stroking his face pauses. 

Alex turns on his side, and when he opens his eyes he sees a pair of bright blue orbs looking straight at him. For a while all they do is stare at each other, feeling each other’s soft breaths against each other’s faces.

It’s Brendan who breaks the stillness.

“Chucky,” he says, voice barely a whisper, “is it okay if I kiss you?”

At first the words and what they mean barely register, but when they finally do, Alex nods.

Slowly Brendan pulls Alex’s face into his, and when their lips finally touch Alex moans at the contact.

It’s a soft kiss, a gentle kiss, a kiss that’s so painfully tentative that Alex can’t help but deepen it, a gesture meant to assure Brendan that he’s into it and that he wants it and wants to keep doing it.

When they pull apart, Brendan is flushed and there is a dazed look on his face, as though he can’t quite believe what just happened. 

Alex leans in for another quick kiss. “Good?” he says softly.

Brendan smiles, nodding.

Alex pulls Brendan’s body against his, holding him close. Brendan shifts until he finds a comfortable position, which happens to be with his head tucked into the crook of Alex’s neck.

Alex wonders how he’ll be able to sleep now, especially with the way his heart is beating against his ribcage. He’s not even sure he wants to sleep anymore. He can just lie there and be content until the sun comes up, but soon enough his breathing evens out, and his eyelids flutter shut.


	7. The Morning After

When Alex wakes up, two minutes before his alarm is due to go off,there’s an arm thrown around his waist. He can also feel Brendan’s steady breathing against the back of his neck. The first waking thought that comes to his head is, _I don’t want to leave this bed_.

Alex carefully turns over until he’s facing Brendan’s sleeping face. His mouth is slightly apart, and his eyes moving behind its closed lids. 

Under the soft morning light streaming through the windows, Brendan looks softer, more pliant, infinitely childlike. Alex wants to kiss his closed eyes, wants to feel that soft skin under his lips, but he doesn’t want to disturb him, doesn’t want to see him frown in his sleep as though he’s bothering him, so Alex settles for watching over him and holds on to it all. After a while he gets up and hops into the shower.

Alex emerges from the bathroom to find Brendan still asleep, but now he’s on his stomach with face buried in Alex’s pillow. Once clothed Alex pads silently over to the bed, kissing Brendan’s bare shoulder peeking under the covers.

Brendan turns away from the kiss, hitching the blanket higher on his shoulders. Chuckling, Alex starts peppering kisses along Brendan’s jaw.

“Stop, Chucky,” he mumbles.

Alex huffs a laugh. “You’re not a morning person, are you?” he says,carding his fingers through Brendan’s hair. “Listen, I’m heading out for practice, but I want you to stay here and wait for me, okay? We’ll get brunch when I get back.”

Brendan turns to him then, his eyes puffy from sleep. He reaches up, grabs the back of Alex’s head and pulls him down for a kiss. 

“M’kay."

He’s asleep before Alex is out the door.

**x**

Once he arrives at the rink, he changes and hangs out with the guys that are already there before they get on the ice.

Alex would be lying if he said that their three-win streak against the Blackhawks and subsequent winning of the conference final didn’t make him feel pretty invincible; until now he feels pretty untouchable. But he’s not delusional enough to think that this veneer of invincibility alone will get them through Game 1 against the Kings.

The Kings are a massive team, literally, and there’s always a brutish physicality to their game that’s at once admirable and intimidating and that the Habs so obviously lack.

If they are to stand a chance against the Kings, the whole team needs to be in the best shape of their lives.

Throughout practice a pleasant warmth blooms in Alex’s chest each time he remembers the events of last night, and each time he has to wipe the grin off his face because he’s an elite athlete who knows that there’s a time and a place for everything, and fantasizing about a certain blue-eyed boy and the many dirty things he wants to do to him does not belong on the ice.

Nevertheless, he tries diligently to get through practice and work on the things he feels he needs to concentrate on for the next game.

They meet with the coaches after, running through some tapes from the previous games—systems, power plays, penalty kills. Once the meeting is adjourned, some of the guys head out to lunch. Nate throws him a dirty look when he declines. 

In the locker room earlier, he told Nate briefly about the “dinner and a movie” move and how he thinks it worked because there had been a kiss involved at the end of it. “Attaboy, Chucky!” was all Nate said, clapping him on the back.

**x**

As Alex emerges from the elevator and walks toward his door, Alex gets a pervasive sense of déjà vu. For one, Carly Rae Jepsen’s sugary voice is reverberating down the hall. For another, he thinks he can hear Anna’s voice above the music.

A wave of panic surges through him. 

Quickly he tries to unlock the door. In his haste, he drops the keys. When he stoops down to pick them up, that’s when he hears it.

Laughter.

Not just any laughter, but Brendan and her sister’s laughter. Alex presses his ear against the door. Yup. It’s their voices, all right. 

Alex breathes out a sigh he didn’t know he was holding.

Inside he sees the two of them at the dining table, their bodies close together and hunched over what appears to be Anna’s phone. They don’t hear him come in until he drops his bag on the floor.

Brendan turns first, his face splitting into a huge grin. “Oh, there he is.”

Behind him, Anna quirks an unimpressed eyebrow, and if that look is anything to go by, Alex has a lot of explaining to do later.

“So you’ve met,” he says lamely.

“Yup,” says Brendan.

He’s wearing Alex’s sweater from last night, and it’s hanging a little loose on him. The sight of him in it sends something pleasant down Alex’s gut.

Alex ignores it for later and turns to Anna. 

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he says in Russian, miffed that she’s there in the first place.

Anna doesn’t take the bait. 

“Where’s your manners?” she says in English. “Didn’t anyone tell you it’s rude to speak in a language that not everyone in the room understands?”

Of course he knows that, but they do it so often in the locker room that he’s gotten accustomed to it.

“And I’m only here because someone can’t even be bothered to return any of our messages and mom is starting to worry,” she continues, “although now I see why.”

“It’s only been two days,” Alex says defensively.

“Uh, _yeah_.”

Brendan looks uneasily between the two of them. “Okay,” he says slowly, standing up. “I think this is my cue to leave.”

“You don’t have to,” says Anna.

“No, stay,” says Alex at the same time.

Brendan smiles at them. “It’s all right. I do have some errands to run anyway.”

“But we’re supposed to have brunch,” Alex says petulantly.

“Don’t worry about it,” says Brendan as he slots his foot into his shoe. “We can go out some other time, on me.”

“You sure?”

Brendan nods. “Positive,” he says, then he’s hugging Anna goodbye, saying how it’s a pleasure to have met her. He sounds sincere, too, which surprises even Anna.

At the door Alex takes Brendan’s face in his hands and kisses him, not caring that they’re in full view of his sister.

“So…I’ll see you around?” Alex hates how unsure it came out, a little worried that Anna may have somehow ruined everything he’s worked for, but the way Brendan beams up at him assuages his fears.

“You better,” he says, then leans up to kiss Alex.

Once the door is shut, he turns to Anna. “I’m going to have to take my keys back,” he says, pointing a finger at her. “I’m not even kidding.”

Anna crossed his arms and leans back in her chair. “Sorry I ruined your love fest,” she says, not sounding too contrite about it. “Butthen again you could have just told me about him.”

It isn’t that he didn’t want to tell her. He just wanted to figure out first where Brandon and he stands, which until now he isn’t sure. 

She seems satisfied when he explains this to her. “There’s not much to tell, anyway. We just kissed, that’s all.”

Suddenly Anna’s face lights up with pure glee. “Aren’t you even going to ask what happened earlier?” she says, leaning forward.

Alex doesn't like that look one bit, but now he’s also curious. “Oh god, what did you do?”

Apparently, Anna showed up in Alex’s apartment at around ten, ten-thirty and waited for him to come home from morning skate. When she realized she had left her phone’s charger at home, she went into Alex’s room to look if he had one there. To her surprise, she found a naked man sprawled in Alex’s bed.

“I guess miracles do come true,” she says.

“Shut up,” says Alex. “And?”

Well, she did what any good sister would have done. She tried to appear as intimidating as she could, stood with her arms akimbo, and cleared her throat. Brendan jolted awake, and upon seeing her standing at the foot of the bed, started scrambling for his clothes, all the while sputtering curses and apologies. 

“And you know what the funny thing was?” says Anna. “He kept swearing to me he didn’t know you had a girlfriend and that he never would have come near you had he known. The poor boy thought I was your girlfriend.”

Alex’s jaw drops. “What did you do then?”

Anna shrugs. “I went with it.”

“Anna!”

“What? People won’t tell you the truth unless they’re terrified, so I sat him down and asked him questions.”

“While pretending to be my girlfriend,” says Alex, burying his face in his hands.

“It’s very effective,” she says. “He basically told me everything—three siblings, studies to be an elementary teacher, he even told me he’s been cheated on before and that the last thing he wanted was to be a homewrecker himself.” Anna pauses. “Well, at that point I had to drop the act because the poor boy was about to cry.”

“You’re evil.”

“I’m clever,” says Anna. “Do you even know how smitten that boy is with you?”

Alex looks up at that. “He said that?”

“Not in so many words, he didn’t,” she says, twirling a lock of hair between her fingers. “He’s also scared of you, you know, because he wants to please you but he doesn’t know how. He thinks he’s just this stray you picked up from the street and will get rid off eventually. Yeah, he told me not to tell you, but what the hell. See? I did you a favor. If it weren’t for me you wouldn’t even know all these things.”

Alex blinks at her while his brain catches up. This is a lot to take in.

“He’s nice,” says Anna after a while. “I approve.”

“Fuck you,” says Alex. “I don’t need your approval.” He won’t say it out loud, but Anna's approval means a lot to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three things:
> 
> One, certain parts of this chapter have been drawn from real life experiences. 
> 
> Two, I just really love Carly Rae Jepsen, okay? She makes unapologetically good and unpretentious pop music. I will fight anyone who says otherwise. And if you're wondering, this is the [video](https://vine.co/v/5eK5IuzOWbQ) Anna and Brendan are watching.
> 
> Three, you guys me leave the sweetest comments. I love you.


	8. Until We Bleed

After losing to the Kings in Game 1, on home ice no less, Alex finds himself cramped in Brendan’s tiny twin-sized bed, fingers listlessly massaging Brendan’s scalp. He’s like a human furnace, Brendan. Even through their clothes Alex can feel his body’s warmth. That’s one of the many things Alex has learned about him these past few days. Here’s another thing he discovered: Brendan is very tactile. It doesn’t matter where they are or what they’re doing; he will find a way to touch Alex and be near him.

Alex doesn’t really mind, except for the fact that each time Brendan would wrap his arms around him, each time he’d press his face against Alex’s neck or snuggle his head into Alex’s shoulder, Alex would grow so painfully hard that he won’t be able to focus on anything else but his boner screaming for the attention he’s not giving it. In such situations all he can do, really, is take deep breaths and think displeasing thoughts—like Kopitar’s face.

“You okay?” says Brendan, lifting his head from Alex’s chest. “You’re breathing kinda weird.”

Instead of answering Alex leans down to kiss him. He can’t help it.

Until now he still can’t quite believe he’s allowed to do this, that he can just press his lips against Brendan’s whenever he feels like it.

When the kiss ends, Brendan rests his chin over Alex’s heart and starts playing with Alex’s beard, which has gotten quite thick. “Sorry you guys lost.”

Alex shrugs. Jonathan Quick shutting them out by stopping all 21 shots he faced in a 4–0 win—now that’s embarrassing. He can’t even muster the strength to be bitter about it.

“We’ll get them in Game 2.”

Brendan smiles but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

Now that Alex thinks about it, in the thirty minutes he’s been there, Brendan has barely smiled. More than once Alex caught him staring at nothing. He’s awfully quiet the whole evening, too. And if he’s not reading him wrong, Brendan’s even sulking.

Alex doesn’t like the despondent look on his face. It seems wrong, somehow, incongruous, as though it doesn’t belong there, like pineapples on pizza or Putin without a shirt on. 

“Are you all right?” he finally asks.

Brendan looks up at him and nods. “I just have a lot on my mind I guess,” he says.

Alex pulls himself up and leans against the headboard. “Wanna tell me about it? I can be a good listener. You can even ask Anna.”

Brendan considers this for a moment, then he straddles Alex’s lap, which is both a blessing and a curse since Alex’s dick stirs at Brendan’s solid weight.

“Well,” he says, not meeting Alex’s eyes. Instead he plays with the hem of Alex’s shirt. “I’ve been trying to apply for work since school let out.” 

This is news to Alex. “Yeah?”

Brendan nods. “I’ve gone to a few interviews now, and I guess I haven’t been doing a great a job at selling myself because they keep turning me down, and, well, it kinda sucks.” Brendan’s shoulders slump. “So I’ve been thinking about it and I calculated: I can’t keep the apartment until the end of the month the way things are going, so I decided to give it up and live with Prusty and his girlfriend in the meantime, just until I can get back on my feet, but they’re getting married, you know, and I hate that I’m imposing.”

While Brendan’s telling him this, the blood drains from Alex’s face and his stomach does that things where it suddenly bottoms out. His expression must have shown how horrified he is by this because Brendan’s reaches out to hold his face.

“Hey,” Brendan says, looking straight at him. “I’m not saying any of this to make you feel guilty, okay? I don’t want you blaming yourself for it.”

Despite what Brendan says, Alex can’t help it. If it weren’t for him Brendan wouldn’t even be in this situation.

“So what if I’m practically homeless?” Brendan’s says. “I may be quite literally down in the dumps now, but I won’t be down for long. I’ll make it work.”

“Tell me how I can help,” says Alex.

Brendan, bless his soul, shakes his head. “Unless you can find me a job, I don’t know how you can. So don’t worry about it.” It’s a loaded statement, and Alex thinks he knows Brendan enough at this point to know what he really meant by that, and what he meant is this: I don’t want your pity, I’m not going to accept your charity, I got this.

Alex sits up and buries his face in Brendan’s chest. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles. 

Brendan pets his head. “I know.”

“I’m the worst.”

“You have your moments.”

“I feel terrible,” says Alex, sighing. 

“Do you wanna make out so you can feel better?”

He’s not going to say not to that. So when Brendan pushes him back down on the bed Alex goes with it, opening his mouth and to let Brendan’s tongue lick inside. 

Every time they kiss Brendan just goes along for the ride, taking his cue from Alex’s touch. But there’s a certain eagerness to the way Brendan explores his mouth now, and this causes Alex’s dick to stand at attention.

Alex tries to shift his hips away, but there’s no shifting it while it’s locked under Brendan’s legs. At this point there’s no way Brendan isn’t feeling it. Instead of shying away from it, Brendan grinds down on it making Alex groan into his mouth.

Brendan laughs at this, and then starts leaving a trail of kisses along Alex’s hairy jaw. “I’m going down on you now, yeah?”

Alex can only nod. 

Alex watches almost in a daze as Brendan begins to unbuckle his belt and unbutton his fly, and when Brendan finally wraps a hand around the base of Alex’s dick, Alex thinks it’s better than all the fantasies he’s had about Brendan combined.

For a moment all Brendan does is stare at Alex’s dick, holding it in his hand as though he’s studying it, weighing it, familiarizing himself with it. A few more seconds of this and Alex would start feeling conscious. 

All his life he’s never had reason not to be proud of his penis, evenand especially in all the locker rooms he’s ever been in. Until now, that is. But then again, no one has ever studied his dick like this before. 

He’s about to ask if there’s something wrong with it, but then Brendan is looking up at him with a grin.

“I like your dick,” he says.

“Okay?”

“It’s a nicely shaped dick,” he says, turning it this way and that, and then with his other hand cups his balls and examines them, too. “Really nice.”

And then he’s pulling the skin back and soon the warmth of his mouth surrounds Alex in that incredibly delicious way. Alex lets out a deep growl. Brendan takes this as a sign of encouragement, because he is taking more of Alex, pulling back, and then going even deeper until Alex feels his head touch the back of Brendan’s throat, which then constricts around him. 

Alex has no control over the string of curses that escape him. 

Almost too soon the familiar heat at the base of his spine builds until he can no longer hold it. He warns Brendan that he’s close, but Brendan goes down on him with gusto, moaning around Alex’s dick as he comes.

Brendan stays with him through it until Alex grows so sensitive that he has to pull Brendan up for a kiss him. He can taste himself on Brendan’s tongue, which should be disgusting but it isn’t, not really.

“What were you saying?” Brendan asks when they break the kiss; he has this stupid smile on his face.

“Huh?”

“When I was blowing you, you were saying something in Russian.”

“Oh,” he says, blushing. “I…didn’t realize.”

“I never thought I’d ever find the Russian language sexy, but I have to admit, that was pretty hot,” Brendan says, pressing his mouth against Alex again.

When Alex feels Brendan’s dick pressing against his thigh, he wastes no time flipping them over and pulling Brendan’s pants down. 

“Fair warning though,” he says. “I’m not half as good, so I’d lower my expectations if I were you.”

Brendan beams at him. “Already have,” he says.

Alex doesn’t know whether or not he should be offended, so he just grabs Brendan’s dick and starts stroking it. Brendan has a dick that is proportionate to his frame, curving ever so slightly upward; it’s a perfectly average dick but in the most beautiful kind of way. Alex squeezes it and thumbs the pre-come around the head before engulfing Brendan with his mouth.

What he lacks in skill he makes up for in enthusiasm, and every noise Brendan makes urges him to go further, try harder. Alex gags a few times but doesn’t let it deter him.

Before long Brendan pulls him up and Alex has to stroke him to completion while their mouths are locked. When he comes, he moans into Alex mouth. 

Brendan grabs some tissue to clean them up, and after that neither of them speaks for a long time; they simply lie there wrapped in each other until their breathing evens out.

“Hey, Chucky?” Brendan says after a while, his voice thick with sleep. “I know you have an early morning tomorrow, but would you stay with me a little bit longer?”

Alex answers by pressing a kiss on his forehead.

That night they would have sex three more times, and Alex would barely get any sleep, if at all, which he won’t even be able to feel guilty about later, when he stumbles into practice with Brendan’s taste in his mouth.

**x**

He should have known Anna would tattle on him because a few days later his mom shows up at his apartment. Her mom checks up on him every once in a while, so at first Alex doesn’t realize that she’s there for a different reason.

She putters around the apartment picking up after Alex’s mess, making his bed, sorting out his laundry, stocking up his pantry, cleaning out his fridge and kitchen.

“Mom, stop,” he says when she asks where he keeps the Windex. “I literally pay someone to do this so we don’t have to.”

She waves this off and starts looking for it in the bathroom. When she locates it, along with a few rags, she gets to work. Alex just lets her do as she pleases after that.

When all the windows have been cleaned and the surfaces vacuumed and she tells him she’s making Vereshchaka for lunch, his favorite, Alex finally cottons on. She never makes it unless there’s something to celebrate or apologize for.

“Anna told you, didn’t she?” says Alex, shaking his head.

“She did,” her mom replies, not looking up from the potatoes she’s chopping. “So how is that going?”

Alex shrugs. “Good, I guess,” he says.

It’s awkward talking about this to her of all people, not only because she’s his mother but because when Alex came out to his parents it was his father who had surprisingly been supportive from day one, meanwhile she cried and fretted and walked out the room. Over the last couple of years she’s gotten better at dealing with it, no longer avoiding the subject, making an effort to understand the whole bisexuality thing, but she’s still not the first person he’d talk to about his romantic endeavors.

“Anna told me he’s quite handsome,” she says, turning to him. “And that he likes to work with children. That must be nice.”

“Mom, what are you doing?”

“I just wanted to bond with my son, that’s all,” she says, turning back to her chopping. Then after a few moment she says, “I know I haven’t always been empathetic with your…preferences or whatever you kids call it these days, but I’m trying. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” says Alex as he leans against the counter beside her, watching her hands wield the knife he rarely uses.

“The world isn’t as understanding as dad and me, and that worries me a lot. I don’t want you to lose everything you worked hard for.”

“Ma, I won’t. Stop worrying.”

She chuckles. “Once you become a parent, you won’t be able to stop worrying about your children,” she says, reaching up to stroke Alex’s cheek with the back of her hand. “Are you happy, at least?”

Alex thinks about it, and then nods.

“That’s all I could ask for,” she says, smiling. “Dad and I haven’t really given you and Anna the whole birds and the bees talk, but I can give you one now if you want.”

Alex pulls back from her in disgust. “Gross, mom.”

“It’s very important to be safe, you know that.”

“Yeah, I got it covered,” Alex says, then scrunches up his nose when he realizes the unintended pun.

“That’s my boy."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters left!


	9. With Every Heartbeat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter left!

Alex gets the call at ten minutes to one; he knows the time precisely because when the phone starts ringing he's sat at the edge of the hotel bed winding the ridiculously expensive watch he bought with his first NHL paycheck, making sure he has the correct time, and once he’s certain that he does, reaches for his phone on the bedside table.

“Hey, Alex, sorry to phone you so late but it’s pretty urgent.”

It’s his agent.

“It’s all right, Pat. What’s up?" Alex walks out of the room so he wouldn't wake Nate.

“I’m gonna give it to you straight,” Brisson says. “Someone’s got a hold of a photo of you with another man. A couple of photos, actually. We have no idea when they were taken, but they’re quite telling. Now, the good news is that no one else will see these photos. We’ve made sure of it. The bad news, well, the Canadiens have been notified as well and will be getting in touch with you very soon. Whatever they decide to do with the matter is out of my hands. I just wanted to give you a heads up.”

Suddenly a chill runs down Alex’s spine, sending the hairs on his arm sticking up. “Oh.”

Then, after a few moments, he snaps out of it. “Are they getting rid of me?” he finds himself asking, his voice surprisingly steady.

“It’s a possibility. It’s hard to know for sure, but I wouldn’t count on it—not at this stage of the playoffs,” Brisson says, then the line goes quiet after that. “Alex?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“The person you’re with in these photos—are you sure he’s clean?”

“What are you implying?”

“No random fan took these photos, I’ll tell you that,” Brisson says, and on the other end of the line Alex can hear him leafing through the photos. “There’s something so convenient about how these shots were framed. I’ll send you some of them so you can take a look, but it’s almost like they knew what to look for and where to look for it. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not Sidney Crosby.

As soon as he realizes what Brisson is getting at Alex dismisses it. “No,” he says adamantly. “He wouldn’t do such a thing.”

“Are you certain? Because we can’t keep paying them off every time a new photo surfaces.”

“I am.”

“All right then,” Brisson says. “Well, that’s all I’ve got.”

Alex takes a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves. “Thanks for letting me know, Pat. I really appreciate it.”

“Listen, just focus on your game, all right? Because whichever way this goes, they’re gonna be looking at how well you’ve played this season.”

When Brisson ends the call, Alex finds himself barefoot in the empty hallway. A few minutes later his phone pings in his hand, signaling the receipt of a new email. Alex drops to the floor and opens the message.

Brisson attached three photos in the email, and all three of them had been taken outside Brendan’s apartment. The first photo is innocent enough: it was the night of Brendan’s birthday, and they were outside with their arms wrapped around each other. It’s a sweet photo, Alex thinks. They could even pass as bros in it, but the second and third photos aren’t quite as innocent, both showing the Brendan and he inside Alex’s car and in both photos they are locked in a kiss. There’s something so sinister and eerie looking at these photos, especially with the knowledge that someone’s been privy to his personal life all this time. This is the sort of thing that is supposed to happen only in episodes of Law and Order or CSI, not in real life.

Alex doesn’t know how long he sits there; it seems like forever before he regains the strength to stand up and go back inside.

**x**

The front office asks him to come in as soon as possible once they get back from Los Angeles. In fact, he receives the message as soon as their plane taxies on the runway and he switches his phone’s Airplane Mode off.

The whole drive to the arena he feels like a wrongly-convicted criminal. His offense? The affinity to suck dick. It strikes him, not for the first time but for the first time in a very long time, that he lives in a cruel and unfair world. So the fuck what if he happens to like dick? So what if he likes holding it and likes looking at it and occasionally dreams about holding and looking at it? That doesn’t make him a bad person. He’s a great son, an exceptional athlete, and often a good citizen of the world—these should be the measure of his worth.

Alex considers these things in his head until all his fear and apprehension morph into rightful anger, and lets it embolden him going into the meeting, a sort of impenetrable shield.

But when the meeting starts, with Marc Bergevin, coach Julien, Pat Brisson and a few others from management in the room, Alex soon learns that he doesn't have any reason to be scared. Bergevin starts by saying he wants to keep things short because he’s a busy man. He doesn’t care about what Alex does outside the ice and who, because come on we’re living in the 21st century, people. All he cares about is that he’s a good player and an asset to the whole organization. As long as he’s winning games for the Habs, that’s all that matters. However, they still have a reputation to maintain, and sadly the best way for them to maintain that reputation is to keep his sexuality under wraps. That’s just how it is. In another decade maybe things will change and this matter won’t even be under discussion, but for now this is how things are going to go. He then asks if Alex and the man in the photo are together, well, then he’d have to come in as well and sign some agreements. He hopes Alex understands; its for the organization as much as it is for him, and then tells Alex what Brisson already told him, that they can’t keep paying anyone who threatens to expose him. Now, if there’s nothing else, then he’d be on his way, and they better be at their best in Game 5; they can’t let the Kings win the Stanley Cup on home ice—that’s just depressing.

They shake on it, and when Alex leaves the arena, he wants to convince himself that he’s relieved and that all is well in the world. It doesn’t quite work.

**x**

 

The funny thing about thoughts is that the harder you try to silence them in your head, the louder their voices become. They nag at you until their arguments seem sound, convincing, and there’s no other choice but to give vent to them.

That’s what Alex does.

Instead of soaking up the languid aftereffects of orgasm and the pleasant comfort Brendan’s naked body offered, instead of keeping his mouth shut, he finds himself sitting up in bed and telling Brendan about those damned photos.

The dread that appears on Brendan’s face at the thought of having endangered Alex’s career should have been answer enough, should have made Alex stop, should have made him say don’t worry about it, it’s not your fault, everything’s okay.

Instead, he holds Brendan by the arms, looks him straight in the eyes, and asks “you had nothing to do with it, right?”

Brendan blinks up at him, as though he doesn’t quite understand what Alex is saying. “Do I really have to answer that?”

“Well, it only makes sense. Who else knew but you and Prusty? No one.”

“Hey, you’re kind of breaking my heart here.”

“Please tell me you didn’t do it. Tell me that, at least.”

Brendan doesn’t quite cry, but his eyes turn glassy and his breathing shallow. “I didn’t do it,” he says, “and neither did Prusty. We would never.”

Something in the way he said it, all vulnerable and small, pinches Alex’s heart. At that moment he realizes there was no point in asking, because he already knew the answer to that question. He’s always known.

“I’m sorry,” says Alex, pulling Brendan close. “I know you didn’t.”

For the rest of the evening Brendan would refuse to look at or even touch Alex. It’s a punishment that Alex is more than willing to endure.

**x**

The following morning at the front office, when they’re explaining to Brendan that they would need access to all his social media so they could monitor everything that he puts out online, Alex is overcome with the urge to whisk him away. Brendan’s face is ghastly white, and has been the moment they stepped into the room. The last straw is when they hand him an inch thick of NDAs to sign, at which point Brendan turns to him with a look of such terror that Alex has to reach for his hand under the table. Thankfully Patricia is there to explain the terms to Brendan in a language he can understand. It doesn’t escape Alex how Brendan’s hand shakes when he finally picks up the pen.

Alex feels so terribly guilty that he can’t even find the words to break the silence during the ride home. He feels as if anything he does at this pint will only make things worse.

“Chucky?” Brendan says after a while, his voice unsure. “Is it all right if you drop me off at my place?”

Alex turns to him and nods. “Of course,” he says.

When Alex pulls up outside Brendan’s apartment, Brendan turns to him with an unreadable expression on his face. He looks like he wants to say something, but in the ends he only thanks Alex for the ride and exits the car.

As Alex watches Brendan walk away, he can’t help but feel as if he’s ruined something really good.


	10. We Could Be the Greatest

It’s been three long days since Alex last heard from Brendan, and he is going out of his mind.

The first day, when they had to sign the NDAs at the front office, Alex figured Brendan needed some time to himself—so he just left him a message saying that he didn’t mean for him to get tangled up in all his shit, that he missed him already, and then he went to bed. When he woke up there were no new messages on his phone. Later he tries calling Brendan, but all his calls went straight to voice mail. He didn’t stop trying until the third day, when it was becoming clear that Brendan was deliberately ignoring him. At that point he knew he had to do something, anything.

That’s how he finds himself outside Brandon Prust’s apartment after morning skate, knocking against his door like a madman.

When the door opens, Prusty narrows his eyes at Alex when he sees him there. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just deck you right here,” he says.

“Because I fucked up and I want to make things right.”

Prusty considers this for a moment before he says, “he’s not here.”

“Where is he?”

“Out trying to get a job,” Prusty replies. When he sees the disappointment in Alex’s face, he sighs with all the paternal exasperation he can muster and invites him in. “Want something to drink?” he asks as he closes the door.

“Uh, water?” says Alex.

Prusty pads over to the fridge, grabs a bottle of water, and lobs it at Alex, who catches it easily. Prusty joins him on the couch a moment later, cradling a steaming cup of coffee in his hands.

Alex unscrews the cap and takes a huge swig of water. “How is he?” he asks.

“Could be better.”

Alex fixes his gaze on the water bottle between his hands, because he can’t bear the look Prusty is giving him and how small it makes him feel. “I’ve been trying to talk to him but he’s not answering any of my messages,” he says.

“Can you blame him?” Prusty says. “You basically accused him of extortion. Dude, that’s so fucked up.”

“What do you want me to say, that I regret it? Because I do. You should have seen the look on his face. It makes my skin crawl every time I think about it.”

“So why the fuck did you do it?”

“I was terrified!” says Alex, running a hand through his face. “My whole life was on the line and I didn’t know what to do. My life wasn’t supposed to be a fucking soap opera.”

“Oh, it must have been a real tragedy, I bet,” says Prusty, taking a sip of his coffee. “I gotta give it to you, though. You do have a way with words. That’s real talent.”

Alex glares at him. “Ha ha, that’s funny,” he says. “Now tell me what I need to do so I can make it up to him. I’m little out of my depth here.” 

“I don't know what to tell you, man.”

“Come on. You’re his best friend. You should know,” says Alex, not even caring how desperate he sounds right now. If he has to go down on his knees and beg, he would do it. “Please? I don’t want to lose him.”

“Give him time,” Prusty says.

“How much time does he need? It’s been three days.”

“As much time as he needs. It hasn’t exactly been easy for him, you know.” Prusty sets the cup down on the coffee table and claps Alex on the shoulder. “He’ll come around, eventually.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

“Then you’ll just have to respect that. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but that’s how it’s gotta be.” Prusty pauses before he continues. “Listen, you said you wanted my advice, so here it is: go home, take a nap, and just try not to be eliminated in tomorrow’s game. You haven’t fucked that up, at least.”

**x**

Alex knows Prusty has a point, and that he should give Brendan some time. But he’s never been the most patient person in the world, so that night before he goes to bed he sends Brendan one last text.

“I know I’m not in the position to ask anything from you, but come see us play tomorrow. I’ll get you in one of the suites and I want you to wait for me there after the game. We’ll talk. If you decide that you don’t want to be with me anymore then so be it, but please give me a chance.”

Alex knows he’s not going to receive a response, so he doesn’t wait for one.

**x**

After losing both their games at Staples Center, Alex is glad to finally be playing in Bell Center again. There’s nothing quite like the exhilarating support of the home crowd. Even the small things like the roar that explodes throughout the arena every time Pricey stops a puck, or whenever the Kings’ attempts are blocked, can help boost the team morale and ease the nerves.

But eventually Alex learns to filter it all out, so that the only sounds that register are the slice of the skate against the ice, the clacking of sticks, the back and forth of instructive screams from the guys on both teams.

During the first period there’s a real sense that they can turn the whole playoffs to their favor, even after Jeff Carter scores on a power play on a penalty to the Habs for obstruction.

This conviction doesn’t last long, however; with less that a minute left in the period, Alec Martinez scores their second goal—a goal that Pricey could have easily stopped but didn’t.

Patch scores a minute into the second period, cutting the Kings’ lead to 2–1. But before they can gain any sort of momentum that that one goal could have afforded them, Marky and Jonathan Quick gets involved in a mix-up which results in an own goal awarded to Kyle Clifford.

Alex gets his chance to carry the team later in the period when hecloses the gap to 3–2 with a short-handed goal, but not a minute later on the same power play, Drew Doughty scores, restoring the Kings’ two-goal lead.

When Dustin Brown gives the Kings a 5–2 lead by scoring early in the third period, the home crowd groans, followed by a sinking feeling that settles over the whole arena. 

No one in the team lets the wave of disappointment and frustration get to them—not the coaches, not the players, not even the crowd itself, whose cheering grows steadily louder, urging them to go on and see the game through no matter what.

At that point Alex decides that he’s no longer playing for the team but for himself; no matter how the game will go, he will have the satisfaction of having played as best as he possibly could. 

Halfway in the third period he is awarded a penalty shot, but the puck rolls off his stick at the last moment.

The final nail in the Habs’ proverbial coffin is a goal by Jordan Nolan, giving the Kings a winning margin of 6–2.

In the end there were simply too many mistakes on the their part. They tried too hard to stave off elimination, which in turn rendered their game disappointingly sloppy. Meanwhile the Kings played confidently throughout, with a steady momentum on their side. At the end of the day they were the better team. There’s no doubt about it, and so when the time comes to finally shake the victors’ hands, Alex does so with as much grace as he can.

**x**

Alex gets caught up with the media after the game, and as much as he tries to cut it short, questions about tonight’s game just keep on coming.

It’s bad enough that he has so many iPhones and recording devices so close to his face, they also have to ask him questions he doesn’t particularly want to answer.

When he’s finally let go, he wastes no time showering and dressing up. He emerges from the locker room with his hair wet, his shirttail untucked, and the top buttons of his shirt unbuttoned.

The crowd in the arena has significantly thinned out when he makes it to the elevators, and barely encounters anyone on the way up.

Alex finds the right suite easily enough, but when he pushes the doors open the room is empty.

Dropping his bag on the floor, he shuffles toward the massive windows and rests his forehead against the cool glass. Looking down into the now empty rink, Alex suddenly feels so exhausted that he could weep and not feel guilty about it.

In fact he’s just about to do that when he hears the door opening behind him, and when he turns his eyes land first on Brendan wiping his hands with paper towels, and then on the sweater he’s wearing—Alex’s.

A surge of affection fills Alex’s chest.“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” replies Brendan.

“I didn’t think you’d come.”

Brendan doesn’t have an answer to that, as if he, too, didn’t even think he’d be there.

Alex has a whole speech prepared for this very moment, but the words escape him as soon as he opens his mouth. Sighing, he walks over to where Brendan stands.

“I’m sorry,” he says eventually. And when Brendan doesn’t respond, he continues. “I’m sorry that I dragged you into my mess. I’m sorry I hurt you. And I’m sorry that I always keep having to say sorry to you, which has kind of become the recurring theme to our relationship and that’s…not good. So I’m sorry about that, too.”

“I forgive you,” Brendan says, nodding. “I can’t imagine what it must have felt like to go through all of that. I would’ve probably done the same if I were in your shoes.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You’re not a douchebag.”

Brendan smiles at that, all warm and bright, and Alex realizes how much he missed seeing it, but then it disappears from his face as soon as it appears. His gaze drops to the floor.

“So…I had some time to think it over,” he says slowly, deliberately, as if trying not to stumble over his words, “and I’ve decided that it’s for the best if we stop seeing each other.”

“Why?” he finds himself asking.

Alex thought that after tonight’s loss he had finally hit rock bottom, but as it turns out he has a couple more levels from which to fall. 

Brendan stares up at him with sad smile. “There’s no way we could have worked out, anyway,” he says. “Think about it. We live in two different worlds.”

“So?”

“Don’t you get it?” says Brendan, visibly frustrated. “You’re Alex Galchenyuk, and I—I’m just Brendan.”

“Can everybody please stop throwing out my name like it’s supposed to be intimidating?” Alex spits out. “I’m not the face of the franchise like Sidney Crosby. I’m not even Patrick Kane. I haven’t even held The Cup in my life. Your argument would have made more sense if we actually won the playoffs, but we lost. We’re the best losers in the league, but we’re still losers.”

“Are you saying that you’re willing to come out?” Brendan says, shaking his head. “I can’t even hold your hand in public.”

Alex has no answer to that. he’s never actually thought about it.

“See?” Brendan says after a while. “Hockey will always come first. I don’t want you to feel guilty about that. Hockey is your life, and there’s no place for me in it.”

“Are you done?”

Brendan opens his mouth like he wants to say more, but then he’s nodding. Alex steps into his space. 

“You kept giving me all these reasons why we shouldn’t be together, but what about the reasons why we should? Those things count, too.” When Brendan doesn’t move away from him, Alex reaches out to touch his cheek. “When I’m with you I constantly want to be the best person I can be. You make me think about others beside myself. I feel safe when you’re around and you make me happy. When I’m not with you I see your face in a crowd. I hear a stupid song and I think of you. Maybe it’s stupid, but that’s how I feel.” Alex closes the distance between them, grabbing the back of Brendan’s neck and pressing their foreheads together. “Now if you still think it’s not worth it, then…then I’ll let you go.”

Brendan looks him straight in the eyes. “You’re not even in love with me,” he says.

“I want to be,” says Alex. “I’m getting there, if you haven’t noticed. Don’t you want to see where this can go?” 

“But what if we’re making a mistake here?” 

Alex sees the doubt in Brendan’s face, but he thinks he sees hope in there, too, and he holds on to that. “Then we’ll make that mistake together.”

For a long while all Brendan does is stare at him with uncertain eyes. It seems like an eternity has passed before Brendan deflates and buries his head in the crook of Alex’s neck. 

“Damn you,” he says. “You drive a pretty hard bargain.”

Alex lets out a sigh of relief, bringing his arms around Brendan and resting his cheek on Brendan’s hair. 

The tension that seeps out of Alex is so great that he fears his knees would buckle, but he allows himself to stay in the moment a little while longer.

“Let’s get out of here.”

**x**

Giving exit interviews is not exactly an unpleasant event, but it’s also not something Alex particularly looks forward to doing. On the one hand, it’s always awkward to look back on the past season especially when all you see are the losses and missed opportunities. On the other, it’s nice to be able to finally close this chapter in his life and take some time off. Nevertheless, he gets through it as best as he can, and once he’s done goes out of his way to wish the guys a good summer, then says he’d be seeing them next season. Some of them may not come back as a Canadien next season, heck, Alex may not even come back as a Canadian next season, but they all come back, one way or another, whether they’re wearing the same blue, red, white or a sweater of different colors.

Alex drops by Patricia’s office on his way out, just to say thank you for everything she’s done for him.

“You’re welcome,” she says, smiling. “Did you find what you were looking for?” She cocks her head at the folder she handed Alex.

He looks down at it and nods. It contains all the information the front office had collected about the source of the photos, and Alex isn’t surprised to find the familiar name printed there. At the back of his mind he always had his suspicions about her.

“Have fun in the summer,” she says. “Sadly the front office doesn’t have such luxury.”

As he’s about leave, Alex’s eyes land on her computer screen, on which a job posting for an assistant media officer is displayed.Then he asks if he could read the whole thing, to which Patricia assents.

“Do know someone who can fill the position?” she asks.

Alex thinks he knows just the right person for it.

When he gets home that morning, he tells Brendan about the posting, how the schedule is pretty flexible, the pay is great, and since he already have ties with the organization, it’s his if he wants it. Of course he’d still have to go in for an interview for formality’s sake.

“I dunno,” says Brendan, his eyebrows furrowed. “I’ve never been a huge fan of nepotism, but I’m not gonna lie, it feels pretty great when you’re at the receiving end of it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with accepting help if you need it,” Alex says. “Besides, they will still fire you if you turn out to be shitty at the job.”

Alex’s phone rings, and they decide to table the discussion for later.

It’s his mother. 

She says they’re going out for a late lunch, and he’s bringing Brendan along, but first he should shave all his beard off because he’s looking like a homeless person and she doesn’t like it.

“Obviously you can opt out if you don’t feel like it, but I kinda want you to meet my parents. I mean, you already met Anna, and she’s worse than my parents,” says Alex, blushing a little bit. “Or is it too soon?”

“I’ll come if you let me shave your beard,” Brendan says.

Alex narrows his eyes at him. “Is that a weird fetish of yours?”

“ _No_ ,” he says, chuckling. “It’s just that I’ve never been able to grow a beard of my own so I don’t know what it’s like to actually shave one, and I want to experience it at least once.”

In the bathroom, Alex leans over the sink and hands Brendan the clippers. Brendan seems sure enough at first, but when he turns the clippers on, he hesitates.

“What?” Alex asks.

Brendan bites his lip. “Do you guys have any weird superstitions when it comes to shaving,” he says. “I just don’t want you blaming me for any more bad luck next season.”

Alex thinks about it, but then he figures he doesn’t really care either way. 

Alex refuses to put too much faith in luck and superstitions, but standing there in the bathroom with Brendan and seeing their distorted reflection in his cracked mirror, he has to admit—he feels like he’s the luckiest man in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really appreciate everyone who's stuck with this story until the very end. That means to me. Cheers!


End file.
